Orphan Hero

by John Babb

  “You’re liable to get everybody kilt.”

  “If we don’t do this, they’re gonna destroy this town, then there’s no telling how many innocent people will get hurt. And if we don’t do it at daybreak, the man I left tied up in the cave will make sure they know who took their weapons.” He looked at the two men. “I’m not asking you to fight them. But I need help finding where the storekeepers—and Simpson—live.”

  John Durham shrugged his shoulders and waved him off. “I always wanted to shoot one of those repeaters.” He turned to Matt. “You go get Andrews and Simpson. We’ll get the others and meet you back here by four o’clock. Don’t take no for an answer.”

  Just after four o’clock in the morning, seven men met in the Durham kitchen, nursing hot coffee that Sue and her mother-in-law brought them. They listened to B. F. describe the situation, the location of the hideout, and how they should arrange themselves on the north side of the cave opening. He also demonstrated how to load the Spencer and the necessity of pulling the hammer back each time before pulling the trigger.

  As they stepped out in the yard, the moon was rapidly falling out of the sky, leaving the men only star light to guide them. All were bundled up and hunched over in their saddles against the cold. Thankfully, there was no wind, but B. F. guessed the temperature at no better than the mid-twenties. It was the kind of night where sounds carried a long distance, so there would be no way to ride down this rocky road and sneak up on anybody. They needed to be in place well before the guerillas arrived after daybreak.

  They tied their horses in the trees a half-mile from the cave, after hearing Lem Simpson caution that on a still night like this, the horses might act up if they heard or winded the gang’s horses. The moon was long gone as they walked the final stretch to the cave. It was difficult to see someone more than six feet away, so they stayed close together.

  B. F. located the case of rifles and distributed thirty-five rounds of ammunition to each man. He stood by and observed every gun being loaded, then turned to Simpson and Matt Durham for their war-time experience in placing men in an offensive configuration near the mouth of the cave—all behind good cover. Each man crouched no more than twenty-five steps from the cave opening.

  It was still a half-hour until daylight. They had all been told no moving, no matches, and no tobacco. It was hard to do, sitting at odd angles on the side of the hill and trying not to think about how cold they were. As the darkness turned to that gray time just before dawn, all of them saw things emerging from the dim light that looked like targets, but with continued inspection proved only to be an odd stump or bush.

  With the sunrise just beginning to splotch the treetops above their heads, a pair of fox squirrels hopping through dry leaves off in the distance got them all on edge. B. F. repositioned himself to relieve his numb feet and to try and get his back aligned with a beam of sunlight. It didn’t help—he was still cold.

  About twenty crows set up a ruckus in the valley off to the south, and they could see them lifting above the tree line and flying to the east. Simpson looked at the men on either side of him and pointed at his rifle. They each passed a similar sign to the others, and the men made sure yet again that they were well concealed in the shadows.

  In ten minutes, they heard the sound of horse hooves on the rocks below, then somebody climbing up the side of the hill. B. F. thought he could identify Bob from the night before, but there was no sign of anyone else. Bob walked up to the cave.

  “McCorkle. It’s me, Bob. Push that ladder up here.” He waited almost a minute before calling again. “McCorkle. Wake up down there!” He looked around the cave opening, didn’t seem to find what he was seeking, and walked back the way he had come about thirty yards.

  He called down the hill. “Hey, Tuck. McCorkle ain’t answering. And there ain’t no sign of the ladder.”

  More steps coming up the hill—five of them including Bob. “You tell that sumbitch to get that ladder up.”

  Bob was back at the entrance, this time louder. “McCorkle! Tuck is here. Wake up!”

  Tuck and the others were close behind. “Stuart, you and Best look hard for that ladder. The damned fool mighta gone in town to Peevey’s last night.”

  John Durham’s voice cut through the cold. “Get your hands up or we shoot.”

  Ignoring the warning, the guerillas all drew their sidearms, firing toward the voice, and simultaneously trying to find cover. B. F. pulled the trigger, dropping one of the men, and the hillside was immediately filled with smoke and the sing of lead. Their vision was occluded almost completely with a dense cloud of gun smoke.

  B. F. was able to see another guerilla that seemed to be aiming his pistol directly at him and he quickly fired at about the same time the man’s gun spouted a puff of smoke. He was fairly sure he had hit him but not positive the shot had finished him. He moved a few feet to his left to find a hole in the smoke and saw the man again, lying on the ground, but sighting on him a second time. B. F. fired again, but then spotted Tuck in his peripheral vision, scrambling for the cave entrance.

  Due to the cloud of smoke, most of the others blindly emptied their guns in the direction of where the guerillas had been. Lem Simpson took off at a dead run down the hill the way the men had come, arriving among their horses in time to get off a shot at a man getting away on his horse. His target pitched backward, falling hard to the ground. Simpson ran up to where he landed, cocked another shell in the chamber, and fired at point blank range, then everything was still.

  Back on the side of the hill, B. F. called out to the men. “Anybody hurt?”

  John Durham looked at his friends. “I think we’re all in one piece.” He turned to B.F and smiled. “That hat of yours has seen better days, though.”

  B. F. pulled it off and found two holes about an inch apart through the brim of his almost-new silk hat. Apparently the guerilla’s aim had been distracted just enough. It was far too cold to sweat, but nevertheless, he wiped his brow with the hat. That was about as close as he wanted to come to a bullet. He walked closer to the cave, stopped about ten feet from the hole, and called out, “Come on out, Smith. We know you’re down there.”

  The voice was strained. “Come and get me, ye damned Yankee lovers.”

  B. F. signaled the men together and spoke quietly to them. “He probably hurt himself when he jumped into the cave. But don’t get near the opening. He’d like nothing better than to pick us off!”

  “How are we gonna get him outa there?”

  “He’s got enough rations down there to last several days. There is a way for us to get him without any of us getting hurt.” B. F. looked around the gathered circle at each of them. “But it’ll mean he won’t live to go to jail.”

  Squire Cave shook his head. “If he went to jail in this county, he’d get loose in a week. He’s got too many friends around for him to stay locked up. The only way to protect us all is to do this final.”

  B. F. laid it out for them. “Let’s drag these boys over and pitch them in the cave. Then we’ll give them a dose of what they were going to do to our town. They had enough black powder to blow up every store in Keetsville. What would you say if we blew up their hideout? Who would know they didn’t accidently blow themselves up?”

  Lem Simpson looked at him. “We done already gave them a better chance than they gave my brother. I say do it.”

  B. F. looked at the others. “What do you say?”

  None of them had any desire to try and take on Tuck Smith. B. F. retrieved the box of hidden black powder and Lem took it from him. “This here job belongs to me.”

  The bodies were thrown into the hole, bouncing on the vertical walls of the cave until they landed with a final thud at the bottom. Then the ladder was retrieved from the brush, and thrown into the entrance as well. Tuck’s voice from the cave. “What the hell you tryin’ to do up there?”

  John Durham spoke up. “One last chance, Tuck. Come up that ladder with your hands showing.”


  “Why don’t you whores’ sons come on down here?”

  Lem made a wick of a strip taken from a dead gang member’s shirt, pouring a line of black powder into the piece of cloth before twisting it together and tying it at both ends. He secured it to the cloth bag of powder in the box, pouring extra powder around the base of the cloth where it was affixed to the bag.

  He waved them all back, kneeled close to the side of the hole, lit the fuse until it had less than three inches to burn, pitched it into the cave, and ran hard away from the entrance. Even fifteen feet underground, the explosion of fifty pounds of powder was louder than anything any of them had ever heard before. A huge cloud of black smoke, rock, and dirt belched out of the ground and rose above the trees, while an area of hillside at least eighty feet in diameter fell into the cave.

  The men tentatively looked into the gaping depression in the ground. As the dust cleared, they could see no evidence that any entrance had ever existed. It was simply a huge indentation in the hill. John Durham looked every man straight in the eyes when he spoke. “Nothing happened here. None of us are gonna speak about this to anybody. Even our wives! Letting the cat out of the bag is a lot easier than putting it back in.”

  B. F. spoke then. “All of you—keep your Spencer rifle. You earned it this morning. But put it away somewhere for a few years. There may be others in their gang who know they had these guns. We don’t want to be connected to this in any way.”

  John Durham again. “We don’t want to ride back up the road in broad daylight in a group. Let’s split up here by ones and twos and cut across these hills toward home.

  “Let me just say one more thing. What you men done here this morning probably saved our town—and maybe a good many innocent people. You can feel proud of the courage you showed today. Don’t never give them boys in that hole another thought. They all deserved to be dead—ever last one of them. As your former Magistrate, I just want to say I was proud to stand beside you today.”

  Forty-Seven

  The Maid Of The Mountain

  Blockade Hollow, Missouri 1865

  The blast threw John McCorkle’s body violently against a limestone stanchion in the tunnel, tearing his left ear almost completely away from his head and breaking his shoulder. The pain was excruciating. By the time he realized he couldn’t hear anything in either ear, he didn’t know whether he had screamed aloud or not. He was certainly in no position to fight if they had heard him and came looking.

  He lay there for what seemed like an hour before he could get himself together enough to resume crawling forward—or at least he hoped he was crawling in the same direction he had been. It was impossible to use his left arm at all, so he awkwardly used his belt to hold his left wrist against his chest to prevent as much movement of the arm as possible. All he could do was pull himself along a few inches at a time with his right arm.

  He began to think the tunnel was leading nowhere. In several places, it had narrowed to no more than eighteen inches in height before growing somewhat larger after a few yards. He wondered if he had simply crawled back here to get stuck and die because he certainly had no idea if the tunnel actually led anywhere. His right hip and his elbow felt as though they were rubbed raw by the floor of the tunnel, and he had lost count of the times the top of his head had cracked on the low ceiling.

  He’d not been able to locate a lantern in the cave before he started down the tunnel, and the few matches he had were long since used up. So he had no light whatsoever and was struggling in complete and utter darkness. In fact, he wondered a couple of times if his eyes were even open.

  He began to hear some sort of faint, but constant sound that seemed to be coming from just ahead of him, or maybe a bit off to the left. In another fifteen minutes of crawling, he realized it had to be water dripping. The bottom of the tunnel got muddy and then quickly dropped away into shallow water. When water droplets landed on the top of his head, he turned his face upward to catch the water in his mouth. Although he still couldn’t see anything, it seemed that the water was coming from a gray area rather than pitch black.

  He half stood in the tunnel, reaching toward the grayness. His hand touched something slick, and it smelled moldy. He jerked his hand back but finally determined that what he felt was wet leaves. There was no explanation for leaves being in a cave unless there was some sort of opening to the woods! He began to tear at the leaves with his good hand, throwing them into the water at his feet. Within a few minutes the light in the tunnel was sufficient for him to actually see the blurred outline of his hand in front of his face.

  Along with a particularly large handful of leaves came a shaft of sunlight, forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut in pain. More leaves begat more light, and McCorkle was able to find hand and footholds on rocks and tree roots along the sides of the sink hole that finally brought him, exhausted and shaking with the pain in his shoulder, to the surface. He quickly recognized the huge difference in temperature between the cave and the outside air. His wet legs and feet were immediately almost unbearably cold.

  After a time, he was able to stand and walk to the top of the hill to get his bearings. He was disoriented as to where he was until he realized that the huge depression in the side of the hill was the remains of the cave, and then it was possible to locate his horse. He had no idea how he was able to climb into the saddle and get the animal started toward Roaring River, but he must have passed out after traveling less than a couple of miles. He slid off the horse as the animal negotiated a dry creek bed, landing on his right side in the rocks, and that’s the way the Maid found him in the early afternoon.

  McCorkle awakened in agony. It took him a few minutes to realize he was lying on a makeshift travois, consisting of no more than a blanket tied between two poles, which was being dragged along by his horse. The frame of the travois bounced over every rock on the trail, sending shivers of pain down his shoulder and arm. He became aware of a light snow falling and suddenly thought of how cold he was. He tried wiggling his toes to get some circulation going, but his feet seemed to be well past the burning and stinging stage, and were now so numb he was barely aware they were attached to his body.

  He attempted to twist himself around to see who was leading him, but the movement caused more pain in his shoulder. He tried to orient himself, but without being able to see anything more than his limited field of vision, he had no idea where he was or what direction he was traveling. Given the large number of downed trees they were passing, he was fairly sure that he was somewhere in Blockade Hollow, but from his vantage point there were no recognizable landmarks to help with his bearings.

  Blockade Hollow was a two-mile-long, steep valley situated between Keetsville and the Arkansas border, which had earned its name during the Civil War when General Sterling Price’s Confederate troops, who were being pursued by the Union Army, felled a large number of trees across the wagon road in order to delay the progress of the enemy. In late 1865, it still remained impassable to any conveyance larger than a narrow wagon.

  McCorkle’s ears continued to ring, but he did hear the sound of a hoarse voice as they came to a stop. “I knowed ye warn’t dead, but I seen corpses that look a sight better. It’s a good thing I was headed over to Keetsville, or you mighta been froze solid by now.”

  The slightly-built figure walked to the rear of the travois so they could talk. “Them clothes is tore to pieces, an ye got cuts all over. Did one of them panthers get to ye?”

  He decided to keep close-mouthed. “I don’t rightly know what happened. I think I fell off my horse.”

  “Well, he musta stomped on ye onct or twict for good measure. Yer nose is broke and yer ear’s about tore off. Them knees is bloodied up bad, and the way you act, I believe that arm is broke too. Just stay still and we’ll be at the cabin afore dark.

  McCorkle blinked at the person standing in front of him, finally realizing that very probably it was a she, despite the fact that the clothes were those of a man. She had a belt wrapped
tightly around a pair of very baggy pants that appeared ready to fall down if the belt failed in its assignment, and a red and white bandanna entwined around her head, so it was impossible to see her hair. It was likely that she had no more than a dozen good teeth in her head, despite the fact that her face was completely unwrinkled and her eyes were strikingly sky-blue.

  “What’s your name, ma’am?”

  She turned to the side and spit a wad of tobacco. “Mattie Lansdown—but most folk calls me the Maid of the Mountain.”

  That got his attention. “I heard of you! They say you got special powers.”

  “Mebbe I do, and mebbe I don’t. Depends on what a body’s lookin’ for.”

  The cabin could not have been larger than twelve feet square. She got a fire started and made sure McCorkle was settled on her pallet in front of the fireplace so he could get warm, then helped him get his boots off so he could get circulation started in his feet. “Two of them toes is shiny white. We hafta watch ’em close—could be frostbit.”

  She bent down and gave him a close inspection in the dim light. “I’m givin’ ye a choice. I can sew that ear back on yore head, or I can cut it off. You ain’t gonna be too purty whichever one I do, and either one is gonna smart.”

  “I’d like to keep my ear.”

  “You’ll hafta keep still, and that ain’t gonna be easy when I start stitchin’.”

  “Have you got any whisky?”

  “I cain’t abide no spirits. My pa had a terrible weakness for it.”

  “I suppose I can stand it. Go ahead when you’re ready.”

  “Don’t rightly know if that ear’ll take or not. It’s purty dried out. Looks almost like one of them dried peaches.” She poured water on a piece of cloth and began to dab away the dried blood and dirt.

  He jerked his head backward. “Feels like you’re tearing it off.”

  “I ain’t even picked up my needle yet. Are ye sure yer tough enough for this?”

  “I can grit my teeth with the best of them.”