He obeyed, leaving the buckets where they had fallen.
A pretty girl, no older than ten, ran out from the schoolhouse, stopping in the middle of the street. She had blonde pigtails and wore a calico dress. “Jennie!” the schoolmarm cried from the door. “Get back! Get back inside this instant. You might be killed!”
“No, ma’am!” Frank called out to her. “We are here to get money. Not shoot children.”
Having emptied their Spencers, the Shepherd brothers filled their hands with Colts, and we put spurs to our horses and thundered out of Russellville, ducking as bullets sailed over our heads.
A few miles east of town, we stopped in the woods, half expecting to hear hoofs pounding the road behind us. Kentuckians were no quicker at forming posses than Missourians, so we had time to shed the shabby clothes and ill-fitting hats we had donned, and put on better duds, dusters, and nice hats. We trotted off like fine businessmen. The law would be searching for men in trail duds—if the law ever came.
After crossing a railroad, we made camp that evening near the Barren River, and opened the wheat sacks.
“What did I tell you?” Jesse said as he picked up a $100 bill.
“You did fine, Dingus,” I said. “Just fine.”
Fine? Better than fine, I had to concede, though only to myself. We had taken $9,000, although Mr. Nimrod would claim we had made off with $14,000. I wonder if that brittle skinflint stole that extra $5,000 for himself.
Before reaching Bowling Green, we rode to a small burg called Gainesville to partake of horizontal refreshments, play monte, and drink fine Kentucky bourbon. Then we split up. George and Oll took their share of the money and rode to Scottsville. At Glasgow, Frank asked a stagecoach driver for directions to Bardstown. The one-armed ex-Reb good-naturedly told us, and we thanked him. Then we rode northwest to Owensborough, where one of Stovepipe Johnson’s Tennessee partisans had tried to burglarize a bank back in 1865, and when that failed, he had captured some colored soldiers wearing the blue, shot them dead, and burned their bodies on a barge before fleeing to Tennessee. Missouri and Kansas, you see, could not lay claim to every act of barbarism during the late war.
We shook hands on the banks of yellow mud. Frank and Jesse had decided to go to New York City, catch a steamer, and sail to California, where they had kinfolk in Paso Robles.
“Maybe we’ll see if we can find our pa’s grave,” Frank said.
“Good luck,” I said.
“Want to come with us, Bud?” Jesse asked.
“I’ve seen California, Dingus, but you have yourselves a fine time. I want to go home, see Ma … maybe find some peace.”
“You want to see that gal Lizzie Brown.” Frank winked.
I did not argue otherwise.
Chapter Nineteen
Somewhere along the line, however, the plan we had concocted had been flawed. A Louisville detective named Yankee Bligh started to dog our trail, and Bligh became relentless. How he found out about our stay in Chaplin, I don’t know, but he did.
A short while later, lawmen knocked on George Shepherd’s front door as he sat down for supper with his wife. They took him to Russellville, where citizens decided he might have been one of the men shooting a Spencer repeater. Russellville’s jail wasn’t sound enough to Yankee Bligh’s liking, so George Shepherd was jailed in Louisville until trial.
“Might have been one of the men shooting a Spencer repeater” was not the kind of testimony needed to convict a man for robbery and assault and the wounding of one of Russellville’s citizens. Unfortunately for George, though, he had kept some of our horses used in the holdup, and witnesses remember horses much better than they recall faces. He got three years in the prison in Frankfort for aiding and abetting. His lawyer, the judge, and the county solicitors begged him to name his cohorts, promising a pardon for his testimony. But George Shepherd knew the code of the bushwhacker, and he was an honorable man.
“I ain’t sayin’ nothing,” he said. “Find ’em your ownselves.”
Well, they found Oll easy enough.
Yankee Bligh had decided that if George was one bandit, it stood to reason that Oll was another. By then, Oll had returned home, working the Missouri farm with his father. Bligh telegraphed the Jackson County sheriff, who seemed real eager to deliver Oll Shepherd to justice. After all, although no warrants had been issued, folks still thought Oll had been involved in the Richmond robbery.
One night, a deputy and twenty-five riders rode up to the Shepherd farm. Oll answered their knock with a shotgun blast through the door.
After exchanging potshots throughout the night, Oll Shepherd knew his time was up, and he wasn’t going to get his pa killed for his own crimes. He bolted out of the house, running for the field he had just finished plowing.
Oll Shepherd knew another code of the bushwhacker. He died game. His father counted twenty bullet holes in his son’s body.
* * * * *
“Come in, Cole, come in.” Mr. Robert Brown stuck out a calloused hand and held open the door.
Everyone called the Browns’ home Wayside Rest, and I don’t think I had ever seen a finer place in all of Missouri. Usually, when Tom Brown, his brothers, and me would come by, there would be music, for Lizzie Brown could play that piano.
Robert and Mary Jane, Lizzie’s pa and ma, came to Cass County from Tennessee before we Youngers ever left Kentucky. Mr. Brown owned sawmills, gristmills, and a tannery—and forty slaves. Pa would often joke, “Robert Brown is richer than God,” though he would never speak such sacrilege in Ma’s presence.
The slave quarters had been burned down during the war, and the Negroes were all gone, and the Wayside Rest didn’t look so beautiful any more. Certainly not much music had been played since Tom had died at Elkhorn Tavern.
Mr. Brown and I shook hands, and as he led me inside, he called out to his wife, who sat by the fireplace in a rocking chair, a shawl pulled up over her shoulders, a black band still around her arm, though Tom had been gone some six years now. Mrs. Brown glanced at me, shivered, spit snuff into a coffee can, and went back to her rocking, staring at the fire.
“You’ve been travelin’, I warrant.”
“Yes, sir,” I told him. “Been investing in cattle. It’s a good business, especially now with the Texas herds trailing to Kansas.”
Cattle kept me moving. I could use it as my alibi should my name ever come up in connection with some robbery. Actually, I used cattle buying as an excuse to find a bank to cash a stolen bond, or something along those lines. Since that profitable trip to Kentucky, however, I had developed a keen interest in longhorns and in the idea of becoming something legitimate. Texas was to my liking. No one cared if you rode with bushwhackers, and ex-Rebels filled the state. The only Yankees you’d find were soldiers and carpetbaggers.
Lizzie Brown came downstairs, brushing back her hair, and touched her mother’s shoulder, whispering something I could not hear. I don’t think her mother heard, either, for she kept rocking.
Mr. Brown smiled. “I reckon you didn’t come here to talk beef with me, Cole.” Clearing his throat, he walked to the stove to find the coffeepot while Lizzie opened the door and gestured toward the swing that hung from a tree limb.
She sat, and I pushed. Birds sang in the trees.
“How’s school?” I asked.
“Thomas Coleman Younger,” she said, “I finished my studies shortly after the late unpleasantness.” Her head turned and she pouted as I pushed her higher in the swing. When the swing came back down to me, she said: “If you spent more time calling on me than gallivanting across the countryside, you might know that.”
I pushed. “Independence Female College.”
She swung up, came back down, and I said: “Then some school in Fayette.” I pushed. “I forget its name.”
“Howard Female College,” she said, swinging back down for another p
ush.
“And finally Columbia’s Christian College.”
Up she went, down she returned, and when she looked at me, I saw only that smile, and the laughter in her eyes.
“You are well-informed, sir.”
“You teaching school anywhere?”
“No.” Sadness laced her voice, and I let the swing come to a stop slowly. “Mother …” She got out of the swing. “Pa can’t take care of her, and …” She shrugged.
I took her arm, and we walked into the yard where rosebushes once bloomed. “How’s your mother?” Lizzie asked.
“Spirited,” I said, “but sick.” I cleared my throat. “That’s why I wanted to see you.”
We stopped walking, and I just let it all pour out of my mouth.
Martha Anne, one of my older sisters, had married some jasper named Lycurgus A. Jones—now that’s a handle no one would want to be branded with—and they had settled down in Texas. In Scyene, just up the road from Dallas, with a wagon factory, a Masonic Lodge, a good church, and plenty of Missourians to make Ma feel at home.
“John, Jim, Bob, and me plan to take Ma down there,” I told Lizzie. “See that she gets settled.”
“Emilly and Retta?”
“I guess you haven’t heard. Emilly married a gent named Rose, Kitt Rose. They’ll stay here. Bob …” I shrugged. “I don’t know what he wants to do with his life. John, neither. Jim … Jim’s a farmer. At least that’s his plan. So once Ma’s all comfortable, I’m sure he’ll head back up this way.”
“And you, Cole?”
I shuffled my feet. “Well, Texas interests me, as you well know. And I think I could do well in the cattle business, ranching. It’s a wide- open country, though I expect I would grow to miss the trees.”
“Is that all you would miss?” she asked.
Instead of answering her question, I said: “Maybe you would like to visit Texas.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Though I might be like Emilly. Missouri is home.”
Nodding in agreement, I said: “Well, I don’t know if I could ever stay completely away from … you.”
She reached out, and I took her hand. She squeezed. I returned the gesture. I walked her back to the house, up the steps, and to the door. The windows were open, and I could hear the squeaking of Mrs. Brown’s rocking chair.
A fine, proper woman, Lizzie was. We shook hands, for I figured her mother had ears like Cass County’s best gossip, and eyes in the back of her head like my own ma. After closing the door behind her, I walked to my horse.
* * * * *
Parson, we might as well get this matter settled once and for all. Yes, I knew Belle Starr. Hell, most men who worked, owned, or rustled cattle in Texas knew Myra Maybelle Shirley. She was married to Jim Reed when I first met her, after we moved down to Texas. Reed had ridden with Quantrill, so when he and his wife and two children knocked on my door in Dallas County, I gave them all the courtesies I would have given any other folks with Missouri ties. Let them sleep in the hay barn, fed them, even gave them some cattle. I am sure my generosity pleased Belle, because I asked for nothing in return.
Jim Reed, of course, got himself killed in a fracas with a Texas lawman in 1874, and Belle took up with several other hombres, including my Uncle Bruce, but never, ever Thomas Coleman Younger. I might have seen her in passing a time or two, but by the time I was actually introduced to her, she already had that daughter of hers, Pearl. I am not Pearl’s daddy.
Now, I admit I am a red-blooded male, with manly desires, but the only woman I ever loved is Lizzie Brown. There was nothing between Belle Starr and me, because not only was that woman meaner than sin, she was plug-ugly to boot.
* * * * *
In the winter of 1869, Brother Bob brought me a newspaper from St. Louis. I always loved catching up on the news from my home state, even if the newspaper leaned Republican, but Bob pointed to an article. It was not good news.
On December 9th, two men walked into the Daviess County Savings Association on the southeastern corner of the town square in Gallatin, Missouri. The banker and another citizen had been visiting inside the office, when the banker rose to tend to his customers. One of the newcomers asked to change a $100 note. Then both men drew revolvers.
As the taller of the pair began stuffing greenbacks and coin into a sack, the other man turned to the banker and said: “Major Cox, this is for Bloody Bill.” And he put a bullet into the man’s chest, killing him instantly. As soon as the body hit the floor, the killer leaned over, cocked his revolver, and sent another bullet into the dead man’s head.
The bandits fled, but the shots had alerted the town, and Missourians were tired of bushwhacking thieves. Gunfire exploded across the town square, causing the killer’s fine bay horse to rear. The killer fell to the frozen earth, left foot caught in the stirrup, and the bay dragged its rider forty feet. The citizens charged, but the other robber wheeled his horse, firing a pistol that stopped the advance.
The killer kicked free of the stirrup, hurried to his valiant rescuer, and swung up behind the man. Spurring the steed, the rider put his horse into a gallop, and the two men, on one horse, escaped with $700.
They left behind a dead man inside the bank, a man who was not Major Samuel Cox. No, Cox, who had led the ambush that claimed Bloody Bill Anderson’s life, was having his hair cut at a barbershop on the other side of the square during the murder. The dead man was Captain John Sheets, a Democrat and one of the most generous men in Daviess County. His widow would be brought to the bank, where she cradled her loving husband’s bloody head in her arms and wailed with intense grief.
The robbers had also left something else behind, a fine bay mare, saddled. The posse lost the trail of the bandits, but a horse like that proved easy to identify.
I read the rest of the story.
As the Gallatin North Missourian recently reports, “Accompanied by two citizens of our town, the Clay County sheriff went to a home, but the killers were hiding in the barn and made off, killing the sheriff’s horse and escaping as twenty or thirty shots fired at them proved ineffective. They are two brothers by the name of James.”
Lowering the newspaper, I cursed.
Chapter Twenty
“Coleman,” Ma said. I gripped her hand, but she had no strength, no will, to give me even the slightest squeeze. “I want to die at home.”
“Ma,” I told her, “you’ll bury all of us.”
“Take me home, son.” She turned her head and coughed that ragged cough, spitting flecks of blood onto the pillow. Tears briefly blurred my vision. Jim, John, and Bob approached while I untied my bandanna to wipe blood off my mother’s lips.
God had cursed my mother with consumption. I could not grasp why He would do such a thing to such a wonderful woman who already had endured so much pain.
“Missouri,” she said weakly.
I had no strength to deny my mother, though I wish I had. I let my mother go home. And that killed her.
Martha Anne, her husband, my brothers, and I agreed that we should send Ma back to Lee’s Summit, but I should not go. Although no one had associated me yet with any crimes after the war, or with the James brothers, posses still mentioned my name. The war had not ended for Cole Younger.
Since Jim had served his punishment in Alton after Quantrill’s death, he decided to lead Ma back home. Retta went with him, as did Bob and John. Jim would see that they got settled, and then return to Texas and help me with my cattle kingdom. They left in April. By June, Ma was dead.
It didn’t take long. Jim told me that a posse came visiting the old tenants’ farm almost as soon as the Younger family had returned to Jackson County. While Jim was away, they rode up, demanding to know the whereabouts of Jim and me.
John snapped back at those dogs: “Jim Younger done his time in Illinois, and I ain’t seen Cole in years.”
“
We’ll be back, boy,” the leader of the posse said, and they thundered off.
Ever the peace-keeper, Jim agreed that he should light a shuck back for Texas. When the posse realized that Jim and Cole weren’t around, everyone could live in peace.
What fools we were. Those so-called lawmen returned, dragged John out of the house. Bob jumped to help, but a big cur shoved my brother down so hard, his head struck the side of the kitchen table, knocking him out cold. As Retta screamed, Ma ran to help Bob, but they shoved her down, too.
Six fine, upstanding citizens of Jackson County dragged John to the barn, threw a rope around his head, laughing as they did so. No, they did not hang John. They whipped him with a blacksnake, demanding to know my whereabouts. John was unconscious after the second stripe was laid on his back, and the men turned to Bob, who had regained some sense and pulled free from Ma, then darted outside to help John. They split Bob’s lips, busted his nose, and knocked the breath out of him while Ma and Retta pleaded for mercy.
“You tell your son,” the leader of the posse sang out, “that if he ever sets foot in Jackson County again, we’ll bury the son of a bitch.”
That proved too much for Ma. She took to bed. A doctor came, treated John and Bob, but shook his head after examining my mother. She was worn out, had lost her will to live, and her lungs were pretty much gone. The deathwatch began. On June 6th, God called Ma home. The Browns and plenty of other good folks came to Ma’s funeral. They buried Ma in the plot Belle and Richard had bought in Lee’s Summit, and put a nice marble headstone on her grave. I thought about Pa, and how we had not even put a stone over his grave, fearing the Redlegs would desecrate his body.
“Pa should be lying next to Ma,” I told Martha Anne after Bob returned to Texas to tell us the sad news.
“Pa’s walking alongside Ma on the streets of gold, Cole,” my sister told me. “It does not matter a whit where their bodies lay now.”
* * * * *
Maybe Ma had held this family together. I don’t know. Desperately, I wanted those words Martha Anne had spoken to comfort me, but no solace came. Everything began to tumble around us.
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