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.

“Rangers. Looking for the train robbers.”

“Ah.” His yellow eye moved to our horses, still saddled, tied in the woods, and my companions, motionless under their blankets.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Bottoms of Little Elm. Wake the others. We’ll have breakfast.”

I started to pick up my pistol and put it in my belt, but he said, “Leave it.”

I moved from Sam to Seab to Arkansas to Henry, nudging them with my toe and saying quietly, “Don’t go for the gun. I’m covered.” They rolled out, confused. “This is Mr. Wetsel,” I said. “He says he doesn’t mind Rangers at his table.”

Wetsel shook our hands, grinning. “Don’t get many visitors. Come up to the house.”

“You fixed breakfast yet?” Henry asked.

“No, but it won’t take long.”

“We got venison. You want it?”

The yellow eye widened. “Ah. Bring it along.”

Henry picked up the backstrap and got his pistol, too, and stuck it in his waistband. Wetsel saw him but didn’t object, so the rest of us got our guns. We walked slowly up the gentle slope, keeping pace with the old man. I noticed a plowed field behind the cabin and asked, “How do you follow a mule?”

“With a deal of difficulty and a lot of cussing,” he said.

“The war, I guess.”

“Yep. Vicksburg. Grant’s grapeshot blowed it clean away.”

“The eye, too?”

“Nope. A knife done that.”

The cabin reeked of smoke and rancid grease. A yellow cat lay on a straw mattress in the corner. “The coffee’s done already,” Wetsel said. He served three tin cups, and poured for the rest of us into chipped china bowls. He laid the backstrap on the rough table, sliced thick chunks with a Bowie knife and slapped them into a skillet on the stove.

“Been here long?” Seab asked.

“Since right after the war. Drove an ox wagon all the way from Alabama. Ever been to Alabama?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t bother. Nothing but carpetbaggers and scalawags. Worse than here.” He poked the hunks of meat with a long fork. “I hope you don’t catch that Bass boy. He’s just doing what the rest of us would do if we had the gumption, getting back at them Yankee railroads. Wouldn’t mind doing it myself.”

Sam smiled. “It’s against the law.”

“Yeah. I ain’t blaming you. But it’d be funner than hell, hoorawing them Yankees. You caught sight of him yet?” “Not yet.”

“Well, I hope you don’t. I hope he gets richer than Midas. Somebody ought to get rich down here, other than carpetbaggers and scalawags. I hate to see the Rangers on their side.”

“Well, he’s giving us a run,” Sam said.

“I hope he runs clean away. I sure do.”

Wetsel had only chair, so we ate outside on the ground. The venison was tougher than the old man’s shoe, but he seemed to chew it without much difficulty. The cornbread and molasses were good, and the morning was cool and bright. We ate quickly, then Sam stood up. “We better move. The state pays our meals, Mr. Wetsel. How much we owe?”

“Nothing. But if you see that boy, just ride the other way.”

Sam handed him a double-eagle. “That seems a fair price.”

Wetsel stared at the coin, then squinted at Sam. “Ah. I figured.”

“Don’t say what you know, Mr. Wetsel.” Wetsel grinned, showing the three teeth and the wet gums and tongue. “You bet I won’t. Don’t forget your meat.” “You keep it.”

“Well, much obliged, then. Stay clear of trouble, hear? Keep all your legs and eyes.”

We watered the horses in the Little Elm. The old man watched from the slope below his cabin, his brass buttons gleaming.

The next weeks are only a blur in my mind. We were in the saddle constantly, riding through the swamps and jungles that are the bottoms of the Little Elm, the Elm Fork of the Trinity, the Clear and the Hickory. Sometimes days passed between our glimpses of real daylight, so closely did we stick to the dank and gloomy woods. The posses pursuing us were large and numerous. One, hot on our trail, would cross the trail of another whose tracks in the spongy ground obliterated our own. Sometimes one posse would follow another for a day or more, believing their fellow hunters to be us. They weren’t working together on a plan to capture us, I guess. Each group seemed to be wandering alone, intent on winning the reward and the glory before their competitors could get them. All we had to do was stay out of their way. It wasn’t long before we knew the bottoms as well as each other’s faces, and sometimes we would sit quietly and watch a posse pass within yards of us, Sam leaning over Jenny’s neck, peeking through the leaves and grinning like a fox.

One day Dad Egan himself passed within forty yards of us in the company of only one other man. “Why, it’s my old pard, Army,” Sam whispered.

Seab pulled his rifle from the saddle boot. “Let’s take them.”

“Go ahead,” Sam replied. But as Seab raised the rifle to his shoulder, Sam laid his hand on the barrel and said, “No. There ain’t no use.”

“If it was the other way, he’d cut you down,” Seab said. “Well, it ain’t the other way.”

So we watched them ride slowly on, Dad sitting his horse erect as a soldier, and Army, a poorer horseman, waggling his feet in his stirrups as if they didn’t fit him right. They looked clean and fresh, and probably hadn’t been on the trail long. I envied them that. I hadn’t been out of my clothes for weeks. They stuck to my body. My beard itched on my cheeks and neck, and I constantly scratched it. If old one-eyed Wetsel hadn’t been fooled into thinking we were Rangers on that morning that was now dim past to me, it was a cinch that no one would think us anything but desperados now.

But those times when hunger forced us to risk a stop at some country store, we learned that if we had no friends we also had no enemies in that region except the posses. The storekeepers, careful to show no signs of recognition, would mention casually the passage of other horsemen on recent days, tell us how many they were and where they seemed to be going, and would offer bits of news they had gathered from them when they stopped. “Billy Collins was arrested the other day,” they would say. “Looks like they’re picking up everybody who’s ever knowed Bass. Glad I ain’t seen him.” Some even hinted that their hearts were with us. And in that way that country people have of repeating each other’s best phrases, those we had robbed had acquired a name. They were the “high-and-mighties,” fat, rich men who were thought responsible for the poverty of the farmers and the storekeepers. As with old Wetsel, they were considered Yankees and scalawags who were plundering the broken South, and the veterans of the Lost Cause and their children weren’t at all unhappy that the “high-and-mighties” had become the victims for a change. They accepted Sam’s gold without question or complaint.

Soon Sam began to see himself as they saw him. He spread his money around more and more lavishly, as if our robberies hadn’t been for our own gain but part of a campaign to seize wealth from the enemies of the people and return it to its rightful owners. He hadn’t thought it through that far, of course. He just liked to be called “generous,” and had forgotten that our attacks on the trains hadn’t made us rich and that his Union Pacific gold wouldn’t last forever.

When it appeared that horsemen were multiplying like flies in the Little Elm country, we moved back northwestward, toward the Hickory bottoms. We stopped at a store near Bolivar, owned by a man we knew, and bought enough provisions to last several days, and some cooking utensils. We picked a campsite in a ravine on Hickory. Seab and Arkansas and Henry were so famished that they decided to gather wood and get the cookfire going before they tended their horses. Sam and I unsaddled and laid our saddles and saddlebags under a tree and led my bay and Jenny to the creek, then tied them on the bank. We were about to return to the fire to help with supper, but Sam said, “What the hell. Let them do it.” We lay down on the grass to enjoy the last rays of the day’s sun. Henry stooped to put the pot on the fire. Seab was cutting something. Arkansas was coming out of the woods carrying firewood. They had unrolled their blankets, but their horses stood saddled just beyond the fire. Henry looked at us and said something about loafing. Seab laughed.

Then came a voice from the woods: “Throw up your hands! This is the law!”

Henry dropped to one knee, drew his pistol and fired twice toward the voice. Arkansas threw down his firewood and sprang for his rifle, which was on his blanket. Seab was lying belly down by the fire, looking. “Jesus! There’s dozens!” he shouted.

The bullets raised puffs of dust around Seab and Henry. One hit the fire and toppled the pot. Arkansas bolted for his horse and mounted. Seab ran for his horse, too. They rode to Sam and me and stretched their arms to us, lifting their feet from their stirrups to let us mount behind them. Henry fired two more shots, then mounted and rode past Seab and me. My bay and Jenny were whinnying in panic.

A mile or so into the brush, we stopped and listened but heard nothing. “We’ll wait a while, then go back and have a look,” Sam said.

“I think we better keep going,” Henry said.

“No. I want Jenny back.”

We waited for two hours by my watch, then rode back, listening. A hundred yards from our camp we dismounted and took off our spurs and crept forward, our pistols drawn. Our fire had been scattered, but the coals still glowed. We heard not a sound, and crept to the very edge of the brush, then into the open. Our horses were gone. So were Sam’s saddle and mine, our blankets and provisions. Everything was gone except the pot that had been on the fire. It lay on its side among the scattered coals. Then I realized I had lost my medical saddlebags, and I walked away from the others into the woods and almost wept. I must have stayed for some time, for Seab came looking for me. “Sam feels bad, too,” he said. “He lost Jenny. We all feel bad.” He steered me back to the campsite. Henry and Arkansas were talking to Sam, but he wasn’t listening. “Come on, let’s go,” Henry was saying.

“Yeah, that posse’s out there somewhere,” Arkansas said. Sam looked at me and said, “Our luck’s turning, pard.” Seab said, “Well, it’ll turn even more if we don’t get out of here.”

We had to travel slowly, despite the posse at our heels. We didn’t talk much, and I kept thinking of what Dr. Ross had written: I’ve given you all you need to be a physician in this wild land. All except a cool, comforting hand (which you may have already) and a beard. And, O yes, a black coat, which I urge you to purchase….

It was all gone. Even the coat. Even my hands were cracked and calloused from weeks of clutching the reins and pushing thorns and branches away from my face. All I had was a stubbie of beard, which itched. But I tried hard to put those things out of my mind, and may even have slept. I remember my head on Seab’s shoulder and my hands pressed against his hard belly, and his warmth.

When the first thin line of dawn was on the horizon we arrived at Henderson Murphy’s. The house was dark and, still skittish from our night’s trouble, we left the horses with Arkansas and approached on foot, guns drawn. Seab and Henry hunkered behind the horse trough, and Sam and I climbed the steps. He knocked, but no one answered, so he knocked again. There was movement inside, and a woman’s voice faintly called, “Who is it?”

Sam hesitated, then replied, “Sam Bass.”

Mrs. Underwood opened the door. “Where’s Henry?” I motioned for Henry and Barnes, and they joined us on the porch. “Thank you, Jesus!” She embraced her husband.

“Is Mr. Murphy here?” Sam asked.

“They taken him away, Sam. And Jim, too. They said it was for helping you.”

Sam’s small body seemed to shrink. “When?”

“Yesterday. They was taking them to Tyler, they said.”

“Who taken them, Sarah?”

“Dad Egan. And that brother of his, Army.”

Sam glanced at Seab, who stared back at him very steadily.

“Lord, Henry, what’s it coming to?” Mrs. Underwood groaned. Henry patted her shoulder but said nothing.

“Is there any horses, Sarah?” Sam asked.

“No. They taken them, too.” She wiped her eyes with her hands. “You boys come in. I’ll fix you a bite to eat.”

“We better not,” Sam said, “but if you got a bit we could take with us, we’d be obliged.”

Mrs. Underwood and Henry went into the house and closed the door. They returned in a few minutes, Henry carrying a lumpy cloth sack and a skillet. He kissed his wife without a word, and we returned to Arkansas and the horses. “More trouble?” he asked.

“More trouble,” I said.

We rode on to Jim Murphy’s place and cleaned him out, taking the seven horses in his corral, two saddles, a pack saddle, three good rifles, several boxes of ammunition, blankets and quite a bit of food. “Old Jim must have knowed we was coming,” Henry said. We loaded a packhorse with all he could hold, and Seab and Arkansas switched their saddles from their worn-out mounts to fresh ones after Sam and I had taken our pick of the bunch. Riding up Cove Hollow well mounted and armed, I felt we had regained some control over our lives, although Jim’s unknowing hospitality hadn’t really made up our losses.

The tiny corral at the cabin wouldn’t hold ten horses, so Sam decided to keep five saddled at all times and tied in the woods near the door. “Last night ain’t going to happen again,” he said.

But Sam was still afraid of a frontal assault on our stronghold. So after we rested a few days and did our laundry, we loaded our packhorse and went back down Clear Creek, leading our spare mounts. Five men and ten horses made a brave array in that jungle, and I felt ready for anything, especially a plan. But all we really needed then was a breathing spell away from the posses and the odor of gunpowder, and Sam thought we might get that farther west, where the mighty railroads and their concerns hadn’t yet spread.

We watched the countryside change from the rolling prairie and wooded watercourses that we knew so well to hills and cedar brakes, and we traveled for days without seeing another rider. On Big Caddo Creek in Stephens County, about a hundred miles from Denton, we found a cabin on a hillside that some poor fool had tried to make into a farm. He had either died or become wise, for it had been deserted so long that weeds were growing in the dirt floor. We moved in and spent several days pulling the weeds and repairing the corral fence. Arkansas found a worn-out shovel in the barn and even cleaned the stalls, and Henry and Seab rode into Breckenridge, fifteen miles away, with some of Sam’s gold and bought a wagonload of oats and groceries and several jugs of liquor and hired a man to haul it. The teamster looked over the place and said, “You boys going to work it?” “We’re thinking on it,” Seab said.

“Well, good thing you got plenty of help. You’ll need it.”

For almost a month we did feel that we were settling there. In the evenings we would sit behind the cabin with a jug, looking up at the ruined fields on the hillside, and argue what would grow there and how long it would take to make the place pay. None of us were farmers, and there was no knowledge in our talk, but it was a pleasant way to spend the twilight. Maybe you’ve noticed it. Men talk differently at twilight than at other times of day. Their voices are softer, to match the light, and with whiskey warming their blood and crickets and night birds beginning their songs and horses moving in their quiet way about the corral, well, it all becomes a kind of music, full of peace.

“I sure wish my woman was here,” Henry would say every night. And Arkansas would grumble, “Mine, too.”

We even met some of the neighbors. They would ride by on horseback or be driving wagons home from Breckenridge, and some would stop and share our jug with us. Some would just wave as they passed. I don’t remember all the names we made up for ourselves. Sam was “Sam Bushon,” and I called myself “Frank Allen,” after our first train robbery. The people seemed to accept us at face value. If any were suspicious of the gold we were spending at King Taylor’s store or McClasen’s, they didn’t let on.

We had done nothing but run since the Mesquite robbery of two months before, and our bodies and minds soaked up the quiet. We even stopped talking much about our next job, the big haul that would give us all new lives. We fattened, and so did our horses. Lazy. That’s what we were. And if we had been left alone, maybe we would be there yet, with crops growing in those rocky fields. It’s not likely, I guess. But we had no thoughts of moving.

Then one day four farm boys passed our place on their plow mules. They kicked the beasts hard and constantly, urging them along the road, and each carried what must have been his household’s whole supply of arms and cutlery. “What’s happened?” Sam called to them.

“Posse forming at King Taylor’s!” one of them shouted. “Sam Bass is in the neighborhood!”

Sam decided we stood a better chance of avoiding posses if we split into smaller groups for a while and traveled separately toward more familiar ground. So Seab and Arkansas and Henry took the packhorse and our spare mounts and went one way, and Sam and I, with enough provisions to last a week, headed eastward into the rough hills and cedar brakes of Palo Pinto County. If our brotherhood didn’t reconvene somewhere along the way, we were to meet at Cove Hollow.

By evening Sam and I were about seven miles west of the town of Palo Pinto. We spotted a large log ranch house, and since the hills seemed empty, we thought it safe to stop and ask for shelter. We tucked our pistols and knives out of sight under our vests and knocked on the door. It was opened by a pleasant-looking gray-haired lady holding a lamp. Sam said, “Evening, ma’am. My name is Bushon, and this here’s Mr. Allen. We’ve had a hard ride today, and wondered if we might find a little food and shelter here.”

The woman held the lamp high and close to us, looking hard at our faces and clothing. I was glad we were reasonably clean. She smiled and said, “Our men are gone. I take it for granted you are gentlemen?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” Sam said.

She nodded. “I’m Mrs. Roe. Put your horses up and come in. Supper’s on the stove.”

When we returned from the barn, two young women were in the kitchen with Mrs. Roe. One was a slip of a girl, redheaded and freckled. The other was blonde and heavy-boned, but also freckled. I noticed Mrs. Roe had freckles, too. “These are my daughters,” she said. “Mrs. Maddox and Mrs. Maddox. They married brothers.”

I asked, “Where have your men gone?” It was a bold question, but I wanted to know whether posses were out in the neighborhood.

“Tom and Jake went to help build the church in Slaughter Valley,” the redhead said. “They should be home tonight. And Daddy’s gone to heaven. Are you religious, Mr. Allen?”

“No, ma’am.”

She gave me a sly little smile. “Well, we don’t take spirits ourselves, but Mama keeps a jug for visitors. Would you care to sample it?”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She poured the whiskey and showed us into the parlor and lit the lamp on the little round table. It was a fancy lamp with a fancy shade covered with pictures of little red roses. The whole room was fancy, and large. It held a pretty red rug and a big horsehair sofa and a smaller settee covered with red roses like the lamp, two rocking chairs and even a piano with a large Bible on top. Lace things hung on the backs and arms of everything. A large painting of a solemn, bearded man, whom I guessed to be Mr. Roe, stared from an oval frame above the fireplace.

“Rest yourself, gentlemen,” said the redheaded Mrs. Maddox. She went out and closed the door quietly behind her.

I raised my glass to the painting. “To you, sir,” I said. “You didn’t leave your widow empty-handed.”

“Nice spread, ain’t it?” Sam said. “Too bad the girls are married. Maybe we should ride to Slaughter Valley and make something fall on them Maddox boys.”

Mrs. Roe’s chicken and dumplings would have made a couple of murders worthwhile. I never ate anything better, even to this day, not even counting in the fluffy biscuits and the green beans and sweet, early corn from her garden. Sam and I ate until we were about to split, then Mrs. Roe said, “Save some room for the apple cobbler.” The cobbler was swimming in cream, and I said, “Do you folks eat like this every night?”

Mrs. Roe smiled shyly and said, “I like men who eat.”

Sam and I stayed at the table and drank another cup of coffee while the women washed the dishes. The shine of the lamplight on their hair and the quiet swish of their skirts as they moved about the small room and their soft voices made me sad. Well, not sad exactly. More a feeling of losing something important, or not getting something I was supposed to have. Mrs. Roe dried her hands and said, “Would you gentlemen join us for evening prayers?”

“We’d be happy to, ma’am,” I said, and’we followed her into the parlor. She took the Bible down from the piano and handed it to Sam. “Would you do us the honor, Mr. Bushon?”

Sam blushed. “Mr. Allen does it better, ma’am.”

“Mr. Allen can read, then, and you can choose your passage.”

“I like the one about Joseph’s dream,” he said.

She found the passage and handed the Bible to me. I read about the seven years of plenty and the seven years of drought in Egypt.

“It all come true,” Sam said.

“Egypt must be a lot like Texas,” the blonde daughter said. We laughed, and then we knelt, and Mrs. Roe said a long prayer thanking God for rain and grass and asking Him to withhold His judgment and forgive our sins and protect Mr. Bushon and Mr. Allen on their journey. Then we rose, and Mrs. Roe picked up the lamp.

“I’m sure you gentlemen must be tired,” she said. “Let me show you to your room.”

The rosewood four-poster left just enough space in the little room for a trunk and a small washstand with a mirror over it. It was the most beautiful bed I had ever seen, and I said so.

Mrs. Roe beamed. “It was my mother’s. She died in it. We brought it all the way from Louisiana.” She turned back the white coverlet. The sheets and pillows glowed in the yellow light. “I hope you’ll be comfortable. Good night, gentlemen.”

She set the lamp on the washstand and left, and Sam sat down on the bed and ran his hand over the pillow. “God, I wish I was a Maddox,” he said.

“Which one would you court?”

“The blonde one. I like them strong.”

“The redhead’s got more fire.”

We heard the women talking in the kitchen, then the back door slammed. I looked out the window. The blonde daughter was walking toward the woodpile, carrying a lamp. She pulled the ax out of the chopping block with a single yank, and returned to the kitchen. “Hey, Sam, she brought the ax into the house,” I said. “I reckon they don’t want any monkey business.”

We laid our pistols and knives on the bed and were about to undress when there was a knock at the door. Sam glanced at the weapons, but said, “Come in.”

All three women were standing there, the blonde holding the ax. Their eyes widened when they saw the guns. “I think you gentlemen should give us those weapons for the night,” Mrs. Roe said, her voice trembling. “It looks like our men aren’t going to get back tonight, and… Well, we’re only women.”

“We’d like to do that, ma’am, but we can’t,” Sam said politely. “Mr. Allen and me has enemies, and if they was to catch us without our guns, we’d die. Don’t worry, ma’am. We won’t do you no harm.”

Mrs. Roe paled. “Well, I must get something out of that trunk, then.” She moved tentatively into the room, and the blonde daughter took a step forward, ready with the ax. Sam and I didn’t move while Mrs. Roe rummaged in the trunk, then slammed the lid. Her hands were full of shotgun shells. “Good night, gentlemen,” she said.

“Sure do wish I was a Maddox,” Sam said when they were gone.

Our bodies sank gratefully into the deep feather mattress. The rocking chairs in the parlor were creaking. The ax lay in the lap of one skirt, I guessed, and the shotgun in another.

Next morning, the ax and the shotgun were nowhere in sight, but the rings under their eyes told me the women hadn’t slept. They were polite during breakfast, but didn’t say much, and Sam and I ate in a hurry, then went to the barn and saddled up. As we led the horses back to the house, all three women stood at the door watching. “Much obliged for your hospitality, Mrs. Roe,” Sam said. He laid two golden coins in her hand, tipped his hat and said, “Goodbye, ladies.” The women didn’t reply, but the redhead smiled. We mounted, and Sam pointed to a gap in the hills to the west. “Keep a skinned eye when we ride through there, Mr. Allen,” he said.

We rode westward through the gap and out of sight, then rounded a hill and headed back eastward, well clear of the house. “When them church-builders get home we’ll have some riders after us,” Sam said.

We spotted them the next day, resting in a cedar brake on Ioni Creek, but they didn’t see us. That afternoon, we found Seab and Arkansas and Henry at Mcintosh’s store on Dillingham’s Prairie. We drank a beer, then headed toward Denton County. “What now?” Seab asked.

“Let’s change our luck,” Sam said. “Let’s go find Jenny.”

Arkansas was the only one of us not known in Denton, and he wasn’t named on any of the warrants. So Sam sent him into town. When he returned to our hideout on Hickory Creek he said, “It’s full of law. The hotels is full, and there’s tents. That Pinkerton’s still at the Wheeler Saloon.” “Did you find Jenny?” Sam asked.

“She’s at Work’s Livery Stable. People go around and look at her. Frank’s horse is there, too.”

“I figured,” Sam said. “I figured they’d put her on show.”

Next morning we rode together to the edge of town, arriving not long before daylight, then drifted in one by one and reassembled in an alley near the stable, not far from the square. The town was very quiet, very dark except for the lantern shining in the door of the stable.

“Henry and Seab and Arkansas will guard the door,” Sam said. “Frank and me will go get our property back.”

Sam and I dismounted as if we were customers. Charlie McDonald, who used to play marbles with me when I was a kid, came to the door. He didn’t recognize us in the darkness. I pulled my gun and said, “Morning, Charlie. How are you?”

His eyes widened. He raised his hands. “Morning, Frank. Morning, Sam.”

“We come to get our horses, Charlie,” Sam said. “Go saddle them.”

“I can’t, Sam,” Charlie said. “Dad Egan says they’re evidence.”

I don’t know why I did it. I was nervous, I guess, and tired. I slammed Charlie on the side of the head with my pistol. He groaned and fell.

“Don’t do that,” Sam said. “Now we’ll have to saddle them ourselves.”

The stalls were full, the stable heavy with the odors of horses and manure and hay and grain. Some animals still stood sleeping. Others moved quietly in the straw that covered the floor, snuffling at their empty troughs. I heard a different rustle in the hayloft above me. I swung my gun to the ladder and said, “Come down or you’re dead.” A shaggy head showed itself. “Hello, Mr. Work,” I said. “You got a gun?”

He dropped a pistol to the floor beside me. “Come take care of Charlie,” I said.

The Denton Mare and my bay were in adjacent stalls in the back of the building. Both our saddles were on the partition between the stalls, my saddlebags and coat still tied on mine, covered with hay dust.

“Old Dad’s careless with his evidence, ain’t he?” Sam said.

“He never expected to have need of it,” I said. We saddled quickly and led the horses out. Charlie was standing now, holding the side of his bloody head.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Frank,” John Work said. “Dr. Ross never trained you for this.”

“Tell Dad he can’t steal nothing from us that we can’t get back,” Henry said.

We galloped out the Bolivar road. Mr. Work was shouting, “Sam Bass! Sam Bass!” behind us, and I knew the law would be after us soon, but we made the edge of town without trouble and rode by a group of white tents that I assumed housed Rangers. A man stood in the door of one of the tents, pissing, and I waved; at him. He waved back. I guess he thought we were a posse getting an early start. As we passed Dad Egan’s house we saw a boy and a girl taller than he walking from the house toward the barn. To my surprise, Sam split away from us and rode toward them. We followed. The children stopped. The lad was Dad’s son, John. “Hello, John,” Sam said.

The boy smiled into the dawn. “Hello,” he said.

“Remember me?”

“Yeah. You’re Sam.”

“That’s right. I used to carry you on my back.”

“Yeah.”

“I used to call you ‘Little Pard.’ Remember that?” “Sure do.” His voice was high and sweet. “Who’s your friend?” “Hired girl.”

“Hired girl! You mean Dad filled my place with a girl?” The boy laughed, and the girl, her brown hair done up in tight pigtails, grinned self-consciously. “I reckon so,” John said. “Well, you tell old Dad I don’t like that a bit, hear?”

“All right.”

“Where is Dad, anyways?”

“Asleep.”

“Asleep? What’s that old rascal doing asleep? Why, the sun’s already up!”

“He was up late. Mama told me not to wake him.”

“And what was the old rascal doing up so late?”

“He was looking for you.”

“Looking for me? I been all over Denton this morning, looking for him.”

“He’s up at the house. Maybe Mama will wake him for you.”

“Naw. Let him sleep. You just tell him Sam Bass come by looking for him, hear?”

“All right.”

“But if anybody else comes by here looking for me, don’t tell them you saw me. I want Dad to be the one to find me. All right?”

“All right.”

“Remember now, Little Pard. I just want to see old Dad. Nobody else.”

“Yeah, I’ll remember.”

Sam leaned from his saddle. “I got a present for you, Little Pard.”

“You do?”

“Come here, and I’ll give it to you.”

The boy walked shyly toward the mare, and Sam bent down and handed him a double-eagle. The hired girl smiled stupidly, maybe hoping he had a present for her, too, holding her milk bucket with both hands. “Put that in a safe place and hold onto it,” Sam said. “And don’t tell old Dad I give it to you. He might not let you keep it.”

“All right.”

“But remember who give it to you, hear?”

“Yeah.”

“And who give it to you?”

The boy smiled. “Sam did.”

“Your old pard, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember that, John. Remember I used to be your pard.”

“I will.”

“We got to go now.” Sam waved and turned the mare, and John and the hired girl waved back.

It was as easy as that. The newspapers called it one of our most daring adventures and made us out to be as bold as Jeb Stuart’s cavalry, but it isn’t hard to ride into a sleeping town and steal a couple of horses, no matter how many Rangers are snoring in their beds. The timing’s everything. An hour later and all those Rangers and deputies would be up and dressed and full of coffee, and it might have been a different story. I still regret hitting Charlie McDonald that morning. There was no reason for it, and it marred an otherwise peaceful visit to my hometown. We had been friends, too.

Dad Egan and Junius Peak considered our raid a personal insult.

By the middle of the morning it was raining hard, but the rain couldn’t dampen our spirits. Sam and I were complete again, he astride The Denton Mare, and I with my books and instruments and vials and black coat tied behind me. We welcomed the rain. The water would wipe out our trail. We traveled fast, to cross as many creeks as we could before the water rose, and we saw no law that day.

Next morning, we weren’t so lucky. We headed toward Cove Hollow and soon encountered Dad and two other riders. They gave chase, although they were outnumbered, and we ducked into the bottoms of the Elm Fork of the Trinity and lost them and switched back to Pilot Knob, where we bought some canned meat at a store. That was a mistake, I guess, for within an hour we spotted two posses on our trail. We gave them a run. Their mounts tired faster than ours, but the rain that had befriended us had gone, and our tracks were plain as painted signs on the soft earth behind us.

Denton Creek was swollen with brown, rolling water, but Sam and Jenny didn’t hesitate. Sam pulled his rifle from the saddle boot and raised it high above his head, and the mare plunged into the stream, the rest of us behind them. The posses dismounted on the bank, dropped to their knees and fired, but none carried rifles, or were too excited to think of them, and we made the far bank and dashed into the woods.

Wet to the skin and caked with mud, we pushed on to Hardy Troope’s store, not far from Davenport’s Mill. The others stood guard while Sam and I went in. The storekeeper was showing two women a bolt of cloth. Sam called to him, and he replied, “In a moment, sir.”

Sam shouted, “I’m Sam Bass, and in a hurry! You wait on me, by God!”

“Certainly, sir,” the man said. “Excuse me, ladies.”

We bought some more canned meat and coffee and a coffeepot and headed southwestward toward Tarrant County, hoping to find a secluded place to rest our horses. But another small posse saw us and blazed away. We had a long start on them and shook loose, but I felt like a dog tormented by a million fleas. When full dark came we doubled back and headed for Denton County and Hickory Creek. Our horses lifted their legs as if they were lead, and we were damp and miserable and hungry. Yet I hoped for more rain, for our trail was plain behind us, and I knew Dad Egan wouldn’t give up this time. It was near midnight when we reached the familiar bottoms of Hickory Creek. Afraid to make a fire, we had no coffee and ate our canned meat cold and crawled into our damp and stinking blankets.

“Why do you think they’re trying so hard, when they didn’t seem to care much before?” Henry asked.

“Four reasons,” I said. “Money, money, money and Dad Egan. They think the railroads are going to win, and they don’t want to be on the losing side anymore.”

It didn’t rain.

A posse was trying to charge our camp, but was held back by the undergrowth. We grabbed our guns and fired a volley into the woods and received a sharp reply. Arkansas grabbed at his neck, but ran for his horse. Henry’s horse was tied on the other side of our campsite, and he started toward it, blood blossoming on his left sleeve. Seab, already mounted, yelled, “Grab on!” and Henry grasped his hand and swung up behind him. We broke onto the prairie and headed at a run toward a farmhouse a quarter of a mile away. A horse stood tied to the fence in front. The rest of us kept riding, but Seab reined in, and Henry jumped down and untied it. “I’m borrowing your pony for a while!” he shouted at two terrified boys on the steps. We cut northeastward, passed behind the farm, and then were safe in the timbers and swamps of the Elm Fork.

The whole week was like that, a crazy, blind game in which we, our pursuers and Mother Nature all had our moves. We dashed about the points of the compass, with Denton as the center, holding nothing in our minds but safety. Rain would fall and wash away our tracks. We would lose the posse behind us only to pick up another when the rain would stop and leave our hoofprints branded in the prairie grass and the mud of the creek banks. We had no idea how many men were after us or what their strategy was, if they had one. We rode three days and nights without a wink of sleep, nourished only by what little food we could grab at country stores and eat in the saddle. We talked little, and when we did we whined.

Arkansas had only been grazed in the neck, but Henry’s wound was more serious. The bullet had passed through the flesh of his upper arm, but had missed the bone. He was in pain and couldn’t use the arm well, but there was little I could do but keep the wound clean and bandaged. Playing fox in the woods had lost its charm for all of us.

The people in the countryside, who had been friendly to us for so many months and had accepted Sam’s gold so willingly suddenly were hostile and frightened. Once after a heavy rain that we thought should protect us for a while, we stopped at the store in Bolivar, where we had traded many times, and Sam and I went inside. But the man stood motionless behind his counter. “Ain’t you going to wait on me?” Sam asked.

“I don’t want to go to Tyler with the rest of your friends,” he said.

Sam stared at him a moment, then began walking around the store picking up things and setting them on the counter in front of him. I stood in the middle of the store with my hand on my pistol butt, to make sure no hands disappeared under the counter. The man reached for nothing, not even a pencil to tally our bill. Sam laid a thousand rounds of ammunition in front of him, then a sack of flour, then several sacks of coffee and a stack of new, dry shirts and pantaloons. “How much?” he asked.

The man didn’t move. “I ain’t selling you nothing,” he said.

Sam pulled a pistol and cocked it and held it under the merchant’s nose. “Then I’m going to blow your head clean away,” he said.

“Forty dollars.”

Sam laid the money on the counter, and we picked up the supplies. “If any of them posses comes through, tell them to leave us alone,” he said. “I’m tired.”

We rode into the woods and found enough dry wood to build a small fire and had our first coffee in days, and cold canned fruit with it. We changed into our new clothes and left our wet, mud-stained, blood-stained rags in a stinking pile on the creek bank and laid a rock on top as a kind of monument.

“Why don’t we ride to Cove Hollow and get some sleep?” I asked.

“Because that’s where they think we’re going,” Sam replied.

I really had ceased to care. The thought of death as a long sleep had begun to hold a certain appeal. But we rode northward, out of the frying pan and into the fire.

June 13, 1878. It’s a painful day to look back on. We were lounging in the brush on the bank of Salt Creek, trying to rest. I was lying on my back, my hat over my face. I was just beginning to doze when the shots and shouting came. I sprang up and fired my pistol before I even saw the huge party of men on the opposite bank. There must have been seventy or eighty of them. They were watering their horses when they noticed us, I guess, for all were dismounted, and several were lunging toward their saddles to get their rifles.

Arkansas, who had lain beside me on the grass, jumped erect, then started to fall. Something wet hit my cheek, and I glanced down. A piece of bone lay at my feet, bits of skin and hair still clinging to it. Half of Arkansas’s face was gone. I was mesmerized by the awful sight, but Seab grabbed my arm. “Henry’s got the horses!” he said. “Let’s go!”

I ran into the trees, then turned and fired again. The men across the creek were mounting and plunging their horses into the swollen stream. I ran again. Sam and Seab were ahead of me, and in the dark shadows I saw the horses. I stumbled and fell. I had tripped over the dead foreleg of the pony Henry took from the boys. Sam and Seab were grabbing at their reins, which were looped over the low branches of a tree. I grabbed my own and jumped for the stirrup. “Where’s Henry?” I cried.

“I don’t know!” Sam replied.

Sam urged Jenny through the thickest part of the undergrowth. Twigs and thorns tore at my arms and legs and face, and I plunged ahead in panic, my horse as desperate as I. No gunfire sounded behind me, but I knew the posse was swimming the stream and would be on me soon. My back expected their bullets. Something did hit me, and I thought, Oh, my God, I’m dying, before I realized it was hailing. Hailstones the size of marbles pelted me and leaves and twigs fell around me. I prayed, actually prayed, that our hunters would drown.

But there was shouting behind me now. Some of the riders had made it across the water. Sam must have heard them, too, for he cut toward the creek, and the mare plunged into it, and Seab and I followed. I thought we were doubling back across the creek, but Sam held Jenny near the bank and let her swim downstream, and we followed. I looked behind me and saw we were downstream from the posse, and a bend in the creek and the trees on the bank had put us out of sight of our hunters’ watering place. It was strange, lying on my horse’s neck, hearing nothing but the rush of the water, feeling nothing but its wet and the movement of the animal’s shoulders, as if trotting slowly, dreamily, with nothing for his hooves to touch.

At a place where the bank was high and the stream had cut a cavelike depression into the earth, Sam headed for shore, and we followed. The cave was scarcely large enough to hold the three of us and our horses, but we huddled there, holding our hats over our beasts’ muzzles to muffle any signal they might nicker to the horses behind us. The earth above, held in place by dead and gnarled roots that hung around us like grotesque moss, gave us some shelter from the storm. But I knew that if any of our pursuers had remained on the other bank and decided to ride downstream, we would be visible to them and naked to their fire.

We stood for what seemed hours, listening for sounds of men or animals amidst the thunder and the rushing water and the crash of hailstones into the woods above us. Before our itching eyes the grass on the opposite bank turned white, as if it had snowed, then green again as the hail stopped and the pelting rain melted the stones. I kept wanting to look at my watch, to guess how long we had been there, but I was afraid to risk its music. At dusk a man walked on foot down to the edge of the creek, about a hundred yards upstream. I dropped my hat and raised my rifle. “Shall I kill him?” I whispered.

“Not unless he turns this way,” Sam replied.

The man was tall and cradled a rifle in the crook of his elbow. I guessed from his bearing that he was a Ranger. He stood gazing at the opposite bank, then glanced upstream, then turned and disappeared. Sam sighed, and I lowered the rifle.

We stood in that muddy depression until full dark, and then stood some more. But sometime during the endless night Sam whispered, “Let’s go,” and climbed onto Jenny and slipped quietly back into the water.