Shadow Country (86 page)

Furious, Jim Starr rode away to join an outlaw band. He died less than a year later, shot down in the Chickasaw Nation by a sheriff 's deputy who reported that the dying Starr confessed to killing his own wife with Watson's gun. By that time, it was widely rumored that Old Tom Starr had killed her to avenge the death of his beloved son Sam, whom she had led into bad company. Pony Starr declared that a white rancher had hired a cowhand to dispose of her and others suspected an outlaw named John Middleton. Ed Watson was the only suspect ever brought to court for the murder of Belle Starr but many others would be nominated for that honor.

With her death, Maybelle was transformed by the newspapers from the ill-favored consort of robbers to the beautiful Civil War spy, border hellion, and Queen of the Outlaws whose lovers were the terror of the West. Her legend got off to a flying start on the day of her funeral in a brief news flash in the
Press-Argus,
which made four errors in its single sentence:
It is reported that the notorious Indian
(sic)
woman Bell
(sic)
Starr was shot dead on Monday
(sic)
at Eufaula
(sic),
Indian Territory.
The “woman” part was accurate but only barely. Next, a Fort Smith editor filed the following dispatch, duly printed on the front page of the New York
Times:

After the first sentence, this report is inaccurate in every last detail.

Since Belle's son Eddie had sworn publicly that he would “slaughter that old sow,” it seemed rather curious that no one wondered if young Reed might not have been the killer, or even if Reed and Mr. Watson, who were neighbors at Jack Rowe's, had not collaborated in the killing, all the more likely since on that fatal Sunday, Reed had left those premises not long before his mother's arrival, just as I had. Called by the prosecution in the hope he would testify against me, Eddie never once mentioned my name.

Dr. Jesse Mooney, who had tended Eddie after a savage beating from his mother, concluded that her son had been her killer, having been told this in so many words by Rosie Lee Reed, alias Pearl Younger, who had covered for her brother by throwing suspicion on me. Rosie Lee related to Dr. Mooney that when she found Belle dying in the road, she lifted her head from the bloody puddle and held her in her arms, at which point Belle opened her eyes and whispered, “Baby, your darned brother done this. I seen him across the fence before he cracked down on me.” Mercifully Pearl seemed unaware that her brother climbed the fence and walked over to his mother and fired a second shot into her face. Otherwise, her account was pretty accurate. I know that because I saw him do it. I was there.

A STRING OF PONIES

Unwelcome now in Tom Starr country, I leased a farm in Crawford County, Arkansas. Having lost a month in jail, I got my seed in late and had to watch the weak sprouts wither in that summer's drought. By winter I was in serious debt, with three hungry kids and a new baby. Sonborn was ten now and helped some with the chores, but Carrie and Eddie were still toddlers who helped most when they stayed out of the way.

We called our newborn Lucius Hampton Watson, after the family patriarch Luke Watson of Virginia and General Wade Hampton, our great Carolina hero. In '76, General Hampton was elected governor; later, he became a U.S. senator. People voted for him even though he spoke out against segregation on the railroads. I couldn't go along with that, not altogether, but I had to admire this rare public man who stood up for his principles, which was why I named my youngest after him. I considered “Lucius Selden Watson,” but with my lifelong nightmares about Deepwood, I thought that name might curse my little boy with evil luck.

I had not welcomed this little feller, who looked like he had come into this world only to pule and die. Once winter set in, there were times I felt that little Lucius would be far better off dead. He brought no joy to our meager hearth but only plagued us down those cold dark days with his starved fret and yawling. Mandy was shocked when I spoke this way, and reproved me for my “brutal way of talking.” I told her that the world was brutal, man's lot, too, so if there really was a God, she had better face God's will. “That is your God's will, not my God's, Mr. Watson,” my wife said.

We had no Christmas that year, none, no friends nor relatives nor even neighbors. Huddling with our offspring in a damp and dirty shack, doing our utmost to forget our stomachs and stay warm, we passed that winter in the nightmare sleep that famine brings, a kind of fitful hibernation. The dull cold misery of dark days without end—dark winter days all but inseparable from night—was worse than Edgefield District in the War, as if somehow I had fallen back into that hellish period. I was tormented by the children's hollow eyes, the coughing and mute suffering, as those pinched and staring faces shrank against the bone. In my helplessness, I lay there stunned, breath cold and slow as the toad's breath in winter mud. Poor Mandy did her gallant best to poke up my dead ashes: “Don't lay too long without breathing, Mr. Watson. Wouldn't want rigor mortis to set in.” But Mandy's eyes had gone dull, too, and in the dim light from the single bleary pane, her face looked haunted.

Was it Plato who said, Life is terrible, but it isn't serious? Did he mean that man is a hostage to his life while held captive by death, so why take such a life seriously? Fuck it, I thought. Fuck God, fuck everything.

One frozen day three riders with stiff faces brought a string of ponies, offering twenty dollars in advance if I would tend them for the rest of the winter. Two did the talking while the third stayed to one side. If nobody came to claim 'em by the spring, they said, then I could sell 'em. That told me these animals were probably stolen, but I was in no place to ask hard questions.

While those two put their heads together, counting out the coins, the third man, who'd dismounted to piss, eased alongside. He was a halfbreed man in half-uniform, a deserter from the buffalo soldiers from his looks. Says, “Watson? Any kin to a Jacob Watson?” “Reckon so,” I said. He had no time to discuss how he knew my name. “These boys are friends of Belle,” he warned under his breath. “They won't be back. You better run this string into the Nations, sell 'em quick—either that or chase 'em off your place soon as we're gone.” He moved away.

I had no chance to peddle those ponies because the deputies rode in at daybreak the next morning. Pocketed my twenty dollars, lashed my wrists behind my back, and boosted me into the saddle. As we rode out behind the ponies, I heaved around to stare at my huddled family a last time, but with arms bound tight, I could not even wave.

With bitter weather hard behind an iron sky to northward, and no man to help her and no food, Mandy had finally lost heart and sank down weeping. Though I barked at him to stay out of the way, my oldest in his thin torn jacket and split soggy boots came running and hollering amongst their stirrups until he got knocked sprawling in the muddy tracks. Poor Sonborn thought the world of me and I never did learn why, because my face stiffened at the sight of him and my heart, too. Every time I remember how he ran after me that day, I feel all wrong in my heart but I could not help it.

In the Territories, stealing horses was a crime far worse than murder, which was very common and mostly well-deserved. I could count my lucky stars, the lawmen told me, grinning like coyotes, that they hadn't strung me from the nearest cottonwood. Perhaps these men felt merciful because they were in on the whole frame-up, which they hardly bothered to deny. On January fourth of 1890, in the county court there in Van Buren, I was given fifteen years at hard labor and carted off to Arkansas State Prison.

I will say this for Eddie Reed, he knew what he owed me for my friendly counsel. He moved my family into a good household in Broken Bow, in the Choctaw Nation, where Mandy would earn their room and board as cook and housekeeper. Reed did not live long after that, being even wilder than his father. A drunk at twelve, a moonshiner running likker into the Indian Country by age fourteen, he was a robber, gunslinger, and killer all of his short life. The following year, convicted of horse theft, he was sentenced to five years in prison. The story goes that his sister Rosie Lee pled with Judge Parker before sentencing to give that remorseful orphaned boy another chance, and the Hanging Judge told her it would do no good. Said, “That young feller was born ornery and he won't quit so he's better off right where he is. If I let him out, he'll be dead within the year.”

But Rosie Lee wagered the judge he was mistaken, offering her own person as security, so he took the bet. Eddie received a suspended sentence on the condition that he quit drinking and go straight. He took a job as a railway guard, serving when needed as a deputy U.S. marshal. Eddie was always a crack shot, and in a brief gunfight in the line of duty, he killed Luke and Zeke Crittenden, halfbreed Cherokee brothers, who had resisted a routine arrest for shooting up the streets. (The Crittenden boys were also deputy marshals, having never been criminals or drunken troublemakers except in their spare time.) But Reed himself would be slain within the year under similar circumstances and so his little sister lost her bet. In arrears to the Hanging Judge and to her brother's lawyers, the brave girl embarked upon her own career in show business. Under her professional name, Pearl Younger, she showed it all nightly at the Pea Green House in Fort Smith, a gorgeous whorehouse celebrated far and wide as The Pride and Joy of the Great American Southwest.

BLACK FRANK

I'd been in prison close to a year when a work gang captain at Little Rock told me he'd sure be sorry, Ed, if Florida claimed you before you boys go out in March to bust the sod because for a horse thief you're a good man with a spade and an inspiring example to these other criminals. When no word came from Florida I was rented for hard labor. The leg chains were unshackled and the guards rode up and down with whips and rifles. The farmers worked the gangs like beasts of burden, gave us rotten grub and very little of it. The fields were mostly in the river bottoms, with no bridge nor ferry for many, many miles, so any man who could swim to the far side would have at least one day's head start on the guns and bloodhounds.

Worried about my family, I was desperate to escape. One fine morning I saw my chance and ran off through the cornstalks, along with a bull nigger named Frank and a scrawny halfbreed, Curly. We had a good jump before the first guard yelled and started shooting. At the river I swam underwater, kept ducking as I angled across. Halfway over, Curly took a bullet under the shoulder but his natural-born viciousness gave him a kicking spurt that carried him to where we could run in and haul him out of range.

Curly was goose-bumped blue with cold and bleeding bad, in no shape to go further. “Should of left me drown in peace,” he snarled. His eyes darted, following our expressions like a card sharp, knowing we knew he was certain to betray us as fast as they twisted that bad shoulder up behind him. Curly's life luck had run out, with nothing good headed his way—he knew that, too. We would have to silence him, as he would have done to us without hesitation. And so he jeered at what we must be thinking, and cursed us vilely while he still had life. He wanted to provoke us, get it over quick. “Fuckin idiots,” he complained bitterly, jerking his chin toward the shouts across the river, but he meant us, too, and all of humankind while he was at it, having the freedom of nothing left to lose. That mean skunk had grit.

Out of respect for Curly's feelings, we went off a ways while we discussed his fate, and Frank said, “Boss, we just ain't got no choice.” I said, “All right, go to it.” I knew how hard it was sure to be without a knife or club, and I did not have the character required to hold under the river current a man who had risked his life with us only minutes before. Frank looked surprised I would admit that but he felt the same. “In front of company, too,” I added, pointing at the knot of men across the river. What we decided was, we would duck this thorny problem—leave him where he was and keep on going. And so we said sorry and so long after trading a lot of jabber about panning for gold in Oregon, which never fooled ol' Curly for a minute.

Our first job was to hunt up two good horses and some common clothing. That afternoon we scouted a big farm, waiting till dusk for our chance to jump the homesteader when he went out back of the barn to feed his hens. That German was real happy to saddle up both of his nags and fork over his fine German revolver and canvas kit for bullet molds and powder, since we all agreed he had no further use for 'em. When Frank frowned evilly, feeling left out, the farmer asked fearfully if “your nigra” might like a packet of smoked ham with some nice cooked grits thrown in. I had to smile at that. Scowling blackly, so to speak, my partner growled, “I ain't nobody's nigra,” but after all the horrible grub these tight-fisted farmers had been giving us, his stomach told him to shut up, take the damn packet. “He's his own nigra,” I advised the German, who uttered a frantic bray not much like laughter. His nerves let go on him, I reckon.

In days to come we were to learn that while attempting our escape we had been struck by bullets in the head and drowned, according to “the wounded and recaptured convict, an accomplice of Watson and the Negro.” Maybe that's what Curly told 'em (“Breeds can't be counted on even to lie,” Frank said), but more likely the warden was trying to make us think no one was after us while alerting lawmen all over the West. I regretted Mandy's grief over her husband's demise but could not help it. There was no way to get word to my family.