Authors: Charles Portis
I said, "I cannot see anything from here."
He said, "This is where I want you to stay."
"I am going with you where I can see something."
"You will do like I tell you."
"The horses will be all right."
"You have not seen enough killing tonight?"
"I am not staying here by myself."
We started back over the ridge together. I said, "Wait, I will go back and get my revolver," but he grabbed me roughly and pulled me along after him and I left the pistol behind. He found us a place behind a big log that offered a good view of the hollow and the dugout. We kicked the snow back so that we could rest on the leaves underneath. Rooster loaded his rifle from a sack of cartridges and placed the sack on the log where he would have it ready at hand. He got out his revolver and put a cartridge into the one chamber that he kept empty under the hammer. The same shells fit his pistol and rifle alike. I thought you had to have different kinds. I bunched myself up inside the slicker and rested my head against the log. Rooster ate a corn dodger and offered me one.
I said, "Strike a match and let me look at it first."
"What for?" said he.
"There was blood on some of them."
"We ain't striking no matches."
"I don't want it then. Let me have some taffy."
"It is all gone."
I tried to sleep but it was too cold. I cannot sleep when my feet are cold. I asked Rooster what he had done before he became a Federal marshal.
"I done everything but keep school," said he.
"What was one thing that you did?" said I.
"I skinned buffalo and killed wolves for bounty out on the Yellow House Creek in Texas. I seen wolves out there that weighed a hundred and fifty pounds."
"Did you like it?"
"It paid well enough but I didn't like that open country. Too much wind to suit me. There ain't but about six trees between there and Canada. Some people like it fine. Everything that grows out there has got stickers on it."
"Have you ever been to California?"
"I never got out there."
"My Grandfather Spurling lives in Monterey, California. He owns a store there and he can look out his window any time he wants to and see the blue ocean. He sends me five dollars every Christmas. He has buried two wives and is now married to one called Jenny who is thirty-one years of age. That is one year younger than Mama. Mama will not even say her name."
"I fooled around in Colorado for a spell but I never got out to California. I freighted supplies for a man named Cook out of Denver."
"Did you fight in the war?"
"Yes, I did."
"Papa did too. He was a good soldier."
"I expect he was."
"Did you know him?"
"No, where was he?"
"He fought at Elkhorn Tavern in Arkansas and was badly wounded at Chickamauga up in the state of Tennessee. He came home after that and nearly died on the way. He served in General Churchill's brigade."
"I was mostly in Missouri."
"Did you lose your eye in the war?"
"I lost it in the fight at Lone Jack out of Kansas City. My horse was down too and I was all but blind. Cole Younger crawled out under a hail of fire and pulled me back. Poor Cole, he and Bob and Jim are now doing life in the Minnesota pen. You watch, when the truth is known, they will find it was Jesse W. James that shot that cashier in Northfield."
"Do you know Jesse James?"
"I don't remember him. Potter tells me he was with us at Centralia and killed a Yankee major there. Potter said he was a mean little viper then, though he was only a boy. Said he was meaner than Frank. That is going some, if it be so. I remember Frank well. We called him Buck then. I don't remember Jesse."
"Now you are working for the Yankees."
"Well, the times has changed since Betsy died. I would have never thought it back then. The Red Legs from Kansas burned my folks out and took their stock. They didn't have nothing to eat but clabber and roasting ears. You can eat a peck of roasting ears and go to bed hungry."
"What did you do when the war was over?"
"Well, I will tell you what I done. When we heard they had all give up in Virginia, Potter and me rode into Independence and turned over our arms. They asked us was we ready to respect the Government in Washington city and take a oath to the Stars and Stripes. We said yes, we was about ready. We done it, we swallowed the puppy, but they wouldn't let us go right then. They give us a one-day parole and told us to report back in the morning. We heard there was a Kansas major coming in that night to look over everybody for bushwhackers."
"What are bushwhackers?"
"I don't know. That is what they called us. Anyhow, we was not easy about that Kansas major. We didn't know but what he would lock us up or worse, us having rode with Bill Anderson and Captain Quantrill. Potter lifted a revolver from a office and we lit out that night on two government mules. I am still traveling on the one-day parole and I reckon that jayhawker is waiting yet. Now our clothes was rags and we didn't have the price of a plug of tobacco between us. About eight mile out of town we run into a Federal captain and three soldiers. They wanted to know if they was on the right road for Kansas City. That captain was a paymaster, and we relieved them gents of over four thousand in coin. They squealed like it was their own. It didn't belong to nobody but the Government and we needed a road stake."
"Four thousand dollars?"
"Yes, and all in gold. We got their horses too. Potter taken his half of the money and went down to Arkansas. I went to Cairo, Illinois, with mine and started calling myself Burroughs and bought a eating place called
The Green Frog
and married a grass widow. It had one billiard table. We served ladies and men both, but mostly men."
"I didn't know you had a wife."
"Well, I don't now. She taken a notion she wanted me to be a lawyer. Running a eating place was too low-down for her. She bought a heavy book called
Daniels on Negotiable Instruments
and set me to reading it. I never could get a grip on it. Old Daniels pinned me every time. My drinking picked up and I commenced staying away two and three days at a time with my friends. My wife did not crave the society of my river friends. She got a bellyful of it and decided she would go back to her first husband who was clerking in a hardware store over in Paducah. She said, 'Goodbye, Reuben, a love for decency does not abide in you.' There is your divorced woman talking about decency. I told her, I said, 'Goodbye, Nola, I hope that little nail-selling bastard will make you happy this time.' She took my boy with her too. He never did like me anyhow. I guess I did speak awful rough to him but I didn't mean nothing by it. You would not want to see a clumsier child than Horace. I bet he broke forty cups."
"What happened to
The Green Frog?"
"I tried to run it myself for a while but I couldn't keep good help and I never did learn how to buy meat. I didn't know what I was doing. I was like a man fighting bees. Finally I just give up and sold it for nine hundred dollars and went out to see the country. That was when I went out to the staked plains of Texas and shot buffalo with Vernon Shaftoe and a Flathead Indian called Olly. The Mormons had run Shaftoe out of Great Salt Lake City but don't ask me about what it was for. Call it a misunderstanding and let it go at that. There is no use in you asking me questions about it, for I will not answer them. Olly and me both taken a solemn oath to keep silent. Well, sir, the big shaggies is about all gone. It is a damned shame. I would give three dollars right now for a pickled buffalo tongue."
"They never did get you for stealing that money?"
"I didn't look on it as stealing."
"That was what it was. It didn't belong to you."
"It never troubled me in that way. I sleep like a baby. Have for years."
"Colonel Stonehill said you were a road agent before you got to be a marshal."
"I wondered who was spreading that talk. That old gentleman would do better minding his own business."
"Then it is just talk."
"It is very little more than that. I found myself one pretty spring day in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in need of a road stake and I robbed one of them little high-interest banks there. Thought I was doing a good service. You can't rob a thief, can you? I never robbed no citizens. I never taken a man's watch."
"It is all stealing," said I.
"That was the position they taken in New Mexico," said he. "I had to fly for my life. Three fights in one day. Bo was a strong colt then and there was not a horse in that territory could run him in the ground. But I did not appreciate being chased and shot at like a thief. When the posse had thinned down to about seven men I turned Bo around and taken the reins in my teeth and rode right at them boys firing them two navy sixes I carry on my saddle. I guess they was all married men who loved their families as they scattered and run for home."
"That is hard to believe."
"What is?"
"One man riding at seven men like that."
"It is true enough. We done it in the war. I seen a dozen bold riders stampede a full troop of regular cavalry. You go for a man hard enough and fast enough and he don't have time to think about how many is with him, he thinks about himself and how he may get clear out of the wrath that is about to set down on him."
"I think you are 'stretching the blanket.'"
"Well, that was the way of it. Me and Bo walked into Texas, we didn't run. I might not do it today. I am older and stouter and so is Bo. I lost my money to some quarter-mile horse racers out there in Texas and followed them highbinders across Red River up in the Chickasaw Nation and lost their trail. That was when I tied up with a man named Fogelson who was taking a herd of beef to Kansas. We had a pretty time with them steers. It rained every night and the grass was spongy and rank. It was cloudy by day and the mosquitoes eat us up. Fogelson abused us like a stepfather. We didn't know what sleep was. When we got to the South Canadian it was all out of the banks but Fogelson had a time contract and he wouldn't wait. He said, 'Boys, we are going across.' We lost near about seventy head getting across and counted ourselves lucky. Lost our wagon too; we done without bread and coffee after that. It was the same story all over again at the North Canadian. 'Boys, we are going across.' Some of them steers got bogged in the mud on the other side and I was pulling them free. Bo was about played out and I hollered up for that Hutchens to come help me. He was sitting up there on his horse smoking a pipe. Now, he wasn't a regular drover. He was from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and he had some interest in the herd. He said, 'Do it yourself. That's what you are paid for.' I pulled down on him right there. It was not the thing to do but I was wore out and hadn't had no coffee. It didn't hurt him bad, the ball just skinned his head and he bit his pipe in two, yet nothing would do but he would have the law. There wasn't no law out there and Fogelson told him as much, so Hutchens had me disarmed and him and two drovers taken me over to Fort Reno. Now the army didn't care nothing about his private quarrels but there happened to be two Federal marshals there picking up some whiskey peddlers. One of them marshals was Potter."
I was just about asleep. Rooster nudged me and said, "I say one of them marshals was Potter."
"What?"
"One of them two marshals at Fort Reno was Potter."
"It was your friend from the war? The same one?"
"Yes, it was Columbus Potter in the flesh. I was glad to see him. He didn't let on he knowed me. He told Hutchens he would take me in charge and see I was prosecuted. Hutchens said he would come back by Fort Smith when his business was done in Kansas and appear against me. Potter told him his statement right there was good enough to convict me of assault. Hutchens said he never heard of a court where they didn't need witnesses. Potter said they had found it saved time. We come on over to Fort Smith and Potter got me commissioned as deputy marshal. Jo Shelby had vouched for him to the chief marshal and got him the job. General Shelby is in the railroad business up in Missouri now and he knows all these Republicans. He wrote a handsome letter for me too. Well, there is no beat of a good friend. Potter was a trump."
"Do you like being a marshal?"
"I believe I like it better than anything I done since the war. Anything beats droving. Nothing I like to do pays well."
"I don't think Chaney is going to show up."
"We will get him."
"I hope we get him tonight."
"You told me you loved coon hunting."
"I didn't expect it would be easy. I still hope we get him tonight and have it done with."
Rooster talked all night. I would doze off and wake up and he would still be talking. Some of his stories had too many people in them and were hard to follow but they helped to pass the hours and took my mind off the cold. I did not give credence to everything he said. He said he knew a woman in Sedalia, Missouri, who had stepped on a needle as a girl and nine years later the needle worked out of the thigh of her third child. He said it puzzled the doctors.
I was asleep when the bandits arrived. Rooster shook me awake and said, "Here they come." I gave a start and turned over on my stomach so I could peer over the log. It was false dawn and you could see broad shapes and outlines but you could not make out details. The riders were strung out and they were laughing and talking amongst themselves. I counted them. Six! Six armed men against two! They exercised no caution at all and my thought was: Rooster's plan is working fine. But when they were about fifty yards from the dugout they stopped. The fire inside the dugout had gone down but there was still a little string of smoke coming from the mud chimney.