by Brian Hodge
By the time my losses were complete, there was not left in me one scrap of desire to remain a part of the land whose soldiers had laid me so low. I had but one daughter left to me the day those first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, and President Abraham Lincoln declared that a house divided cannot stand. Such a thing I knew already, for I had been watching my house fall around me for years, and with the coming of the soldiers in blue uniforms and Kansas jayhawkers in red leggings, my store began to fall as well. On the day I could no longer sit and let it happen, I was beat down like a dog at the end of a musket stock, and as I lay there with my senses fled near to unconsciousness, the Federals set afire a storage building they had cleaned out. They did not even remain to watch it burn, but rode off to divide their spoils. They had laid no hands upon my last living daughter, who was only seven years old, but she ran into that burning shed to try rescuing some ducklings that she kept as pets and had hid within one of its walls, for fear that the soldiers would steal them away and eat them.
I only found her later, while running a rake through the smoking ruins.
I expect it was only chance that it was Union men who pushed me the rest of the way to ruin, for the bushwhacker bands that roved Missouri were no better, and took what they pleased, from whoever they pleased, with equal enthusiasm. But I did not care about this on the day I buried my last child. My mind was a troubled place by then, and my heart as black as a cinder. If a peaceful man’s country took up arms against him, then by God he was justified in taking up arms of his own.
And so I did.
A house divided cannot stand, Lincoln said.
True enough. And I said, Let the son of a bitch fall.
The War may have ended some years ago, but the surrender only took hold betwixt states and generals and the armies they led. While it yet raged, I could see that such a war as this would never end in the hearts of certain men, that they would live according to their declarations until the day they died.
Such a man was me, though by the end of the War I knew that I had been laid claim to by bigger problems than having no true country to claim as my own, and it was not just the bounty hunters who sought to chase down those men who would make no peace. Bounty hunters were but a small bedevilment, because I have not found it a difficult thing to get the better of every man who has come after me.
And this has been part of my problem all along.
Captain Bill Anderson, who took no prisoners but one, kept a silk cord with a fresh knot tied along its length for every man he killed. On the day he himself fell, that cord was filled with fifty-three knots. It used to seem like a lot to me. But no more. If I myself had taken up such a habit, I expect that cord would run four or five times as long by now. Long enough for me to hang myself with, and if you were to tell me to my face that I deserve it, I would not commence to argue with you.
Though I have stood witness to the death of hundreds of men, and have been the cause of many, such that most of them run together in my recollections, it is with utmost clarity that I remember the day Bloody Bill Anderson was smote down. On a bright day in October of 1864, he rode straight at a line of Union troops with the reins in his teeth and a pistol in each hand. While no man knew him to be the least bit fearful of taking chances with his life, you could not look upon such a charge and believe it to be a thing other than suicide. The soldiers obliged him with two musket balls in his skull. I believe it was what he wanted, for his bloodlust had all but drowned itself in the river of red set to flowing by his pistols and knives, and by his own admission he had killed men until he was sick of it.
For such a man as this there can be no going home again, even if his enemy were to grant him the peace of a guaranteed amnesty. He has traveled too far down his savage road to stop and turn around and head the other direction, back to what he once was. Death is all that ends it, and he must see it through. Bloody Bill knew this, and chose his time and place.
I cannot say if or not there is a Hell, but it could be no worse than every day carrying with you the knowledge that there can never be any going back to the man you used to be, for you have killed him along with all the others. On occasion I could see in Bill’s eyes that he knew this as well as anyone can, that he carried this knowledge with him as surely as he bore the grief over his young sisters who were crushed in the collapse of the Federal military prison in Kansas City, where they had been jailed for no reason other than that they were Andersons too.
And yet, for as miserable and lowdown a thing as Bill had become, the weight of which finally sent him riding head on into rifle fire, I have not been so lucky as he, for the bullets do not know how to find me.
Two years back I robbed a bank in Iowa. You will likely express no surprise in being told that it was not my first. There is little work for a man with a history like mine, and work means staying put in one place, which is a thing I have grown ill accustomed to. Although, seeing as how I have never lost a gunfight, I expect if it was steady work I really was after, I would have made just about the jim-dandiest marshal there ever was, but this has never been a thing I could bring myself to do.
After I robbed the Iowa bank, there was some shooting as I left the town, and then it was not but a couple of hours that I realized I was being trailed at a bit of a distance. I rode ahead some distance more and then brought down my horse behind a rise in the prairie and lay across his neck as I waited to see who was following. When he approached, he was but one fellow on his own, so I did not think this could be much of a posse. I fired a few shots in his direction with a Spencer carbine, more to kick up the dust around him than cut him down.
Just get on back to where you came from, I hollered. Stop following me and I won’t have to strap your corpse to your horse and send it back for your mama to cry over.
Take a lot more than me dead to make that woman cry, he called ahead to me.
That’s as may be, but you won’t be any less dead for it.
I warned him off some more, then kept on my way, but it seemed to have done no good. For two days he followed me across the prairies and through the woodlands, keeping far behind and never riding up so close that he forced my hand, although still there were times I thought hard about laying for him and putting an end to it then and there. But it was becoming a game by then, and I wondered which of us would be first to tire of it. And too, I wondered what it was he wanted of me, since he was in no hurry to make his move. No man who has ever come gunning for me was what you would call patient.
It was the morning of the third day when he made his approach, while I was cooking down corn meal mush and jerky for breakfast. He gave me all the warning a man could ever want, as his horse came at a slow walk and stopped yet two good stone’s throws away, then he sat in the saddle holding a white flag of truce made from a rag and a branch. Like so many I had seen fall, by my own hand and by the hands of others, he was not much more than a boy. It had never been the same since the War, with boys grown up too fast, if they got to grow up at all, and lured away from home by the smell of blood and the dream of gold and the notion they would live forever.
I stared at him for a spell, then waved him closer. He dismounted and stood there, bold but not dangerous bold, and I marveled that even after three days on my trail he had no more whiskers on him than a peach.
Well, say your piece, I told him. You’ve had plenty time back there to think it up.
You’d be that Methuselah fellow I’ve heard tell about, wouldn’t you, he said.
No, I’m just old, I said. I expect all old men look alike to a pup like you.
I reckon if all old men was as hard to kill as you, there’d be more of them around. No, you’re him, all right.
I could see right off that there was to be no success had from arguing it.
What if I am, then? You come gunning for me too, think there’s something different about you, that you’ll hit what you aim at?
He straightened up, holding those reins. Nope, I’m smarter than that.
My name’s Jim Wilson. Then he sniffed the air and looked down at the mess cooking in my pan and his stomach rumbled. That sure does smell good.
Whoever it was gave you that name more like as not has a breakfast table you ought to be at this morning. It’s no fault of mine you left it behind.
Jim Wilson snorted and said, She don’t cook much better than what you got there with a whole stove in front of her and a full larder behind.
You had anything to eat since you set off on my trail?
I found me a mess of hickory nuts, he said. Busted those open with my rifle stock. And I picked me some apples.
This time of year, apples are still green.
Well, I never said they didn’t give me the shits.
So I laughed at this Jim Wilson and ladled up some of the yellow mess in the cookpan and gave it to him on a tin plate along with some hardtack, and said, See if that won’t stopper you up some. It’s thick enough.
He thanked me, and it was the only display of manners I saw for those next minutes. Then out of nowhere he raised his head from his plate and looked straight at me.
What I hear is you ain’t never been shot, not a once, even though many have tried, he said. Is that so?
I expect it is.
Jim Wilson broke with a big grin and I wished that before he did it again he would find himself a stick to work at his teeth, for his smile was full of cornmeal. He said, I reckon that must make you just about the luckiest son of a bitch I ever did hear of.
This was not the way I saw it, but a boy like Jim Wilson, there could be no telling him such a thing so that he would understand it. I would have to show him, beneath my shirt, and this I did not wish to do. And I expect that I enjoyed his company. A wandering life is a lonesome life.
Maybe not so lucky as all that, I told him. I’ve been cut pretty good.
Cut? Jim Wilson looked surprised, and a trifle disappointed, which I guess is what I hoped for. Cut where?
In Missouri. During the War.
No, I mean cut where on you.
I pointed down below the buckle of my gun belt, which I still wore in the fashion of my days as a guerrilla fighter. Two Navy Colt pistols in the holsters, and two more smaller ones stuck in the belt itself. A man of decent skill could get off all twenty-four of his shots in half the time it took a Union rifleman to load and fire three. Get in close enough range to use them, and it was not much contest.
I got cut down there, I told the boy. Close up next to my huevos.
Lord have mercy, he said. I reckon I’d just as soon get shot.
So would I, I said.
Well I hope you left the son of a bitch who done the cutting plenty sorry.
I could have lied and told the boy what he wanted to hear, but was in no mood for it. Instead I told him, It wasn’t any man who did the cutting. And who says I didn’t deserve it?
Whoa, he said. Now that’s a story I’d like to hear.
Well, you’re not likely to, because I won’t be telling it.
Now you’re just being contrary, he said, then begged me awhile but got nothing from me but silence on the matter. Such a tale as this a man only wants to tell once in his life, and most often tells it when he knows it to be the last one he ever will. I have held it until now, setting it down I guess as a means of owning up to the sins that led me to receive such a grievous wound to the loins and for all the sins that have come and gone since because of it.
Well, if all you’ll be is mule stubborn about it, let’s us just change the subject then, said Jim Wilson. How is it that you come to duck all them bullets?
I could fathom why he would think it was a change of subject, but I knew better. The two matters were one and the same, as far as I was concerned.
Even if I was inclined, I couldn’t tell you how, I said. That’s just the way it’s worked out. It ain’t like I got some secret to share, if that’s what you’re getting at.
Be a grand thing if you did. You could sell it, and then you wouldn’t have to rob all them banks.
Well I don’t, so I can’t. So that’s that.
It ain’t the first I ever heard of such a thing, he said. But it’s Injun talk, so I don’t know how much store you’d set by it.
About as much store as I’d set by talk from anyone else, and maybe more, considering some of the other white folks I’ve known. Let’s hear it.
Well, he said, you’ve heard of a brave by the name of Crazy Horse, haven’t you, up in the Dakotas?
That I have.
What I hear is, he can’t be shot neither. And probably there’s been even more try to kill him as have tried killing you. No offense.
None taken, I said. It’s not a thing to take much pride in.
Said Jim, What I hear is, he even dares the Army to shoot him, gives those boys in blue every chance in the world to do it, and they just plum can’t. Cavalry soldiers, they’ll be lined up shoulder to shoulder, and he’ll ride his horse from one end of the line to the other, wearing a blanket around his shoulders, and they’ll be popping away with their rifles but not a one of them can put a shot into him. Then he’ll ride back to the rest of his braves and sling the blanket off hisself and give it a shake, and what falls out but a bunch of bullets. Just like he’s emptying a gunnysack of acorns. You got to reckon a thing like that must make them soldiers mad as a nest of riled hornets.
Do you believe all that? I asked him.
Well, I reckon them Injuns must know some tricks. And maybe they ain’t the only ones, Jim Wilson said, and was looking straight at me when he said it.
I told you once already, I got no tricks and no secrets, and even if I did, I don’t expect they’d be the teachable kind. If they were, don’t you think that that Crazy Horse would be letting the rest of his kind in on it?
Jim Wilson scratched his head. I never thought of that, he said. Then he grinned his mealy yellow grin at me again. But you must have plenty you could teach a fellow about bank robbing. And as far as the shooting part of it goes, I reckon I could just stand behind you.
If I needed a partner, don’t you expect I would’ve taken one by now, and that he wouldn’t be one that needed any teaching?
Jim Wilson and I argued it over a good portion of the morning, and he was not a fellow to be easily argued off. He claimed himself to be an excellent hand at grooming a horse, and if I would but take him on, I could save myself that chore. In the end he wore me down, but I half suspect this was because I had grown so weary of having no one to talk to but the horse he would be grooming. Certainly I could not object on the contention that his inexperience might cost me my life, for that was already forfeit, according to a schedule all its own.
So this was how I gained myself the one and only partner I have ever had, if you do not count the men I rode with during the War. And I do not, for war is not the same as banditry, although I admit that in Missouri there grew to be little enough distinction between the two.
It takes aught but once or twice for a young fellow to learn about all there is to know on the subject of bank robbing, and from then on out it is mostly a matter of practice so that he looks and sounds knowledgeable and confident in what he is doing. The partnership betwixt Jim Wilson and me lasted for the better part of a year. We took banks from Oklahoma to the Dakotas, and from Kansas in the east to here in the Wyoming territory in the west. Texas I chose to avoid entirely, for fear of running afoul of Rangers and having them on our trail. We did not need that, as a man will go to his grave before a Texas Ranger will grow discouraged.
In that year Jim Wilson saw me cut down many a man, and he got to be pretty good at it himself. While in that span of time he may have aged but months, by its end he no longer resembled a boy, and watched the world around him with the same kind of eyes as I had seen on youngsters who had aged themselves on the blood of soldiers.
Sometime near the end of it he, with a tongue loosened by whiskey, said, You know,
I don’t reckon I’ve ever seen you take off that gunbelt of yours, not even for two minutes. Not even for whoring.
No, I expect you haven’t, I said.
You won’t even trust a common whore for a five-minute poke?
My poking days are over.
Lord have mercy, he said, I hope I’m dead in the ground before I have to admit to a thing like that. Does it have to do with that gal that give you that cutting down below? If it was a whore that done you that way, that would explain a lot.
No, she wasn’t any whore, and I’ll thank you to remember that.
Jim Wilson looked at me a spell, then just shook his head and said, I know you ain’t apt to take offense at this, but you are the most peculiar son of a bitch I ever did meet.
I expect that’s true enough, but it’s not without cause, I said, and left it at that.
And it was not but a month or so later when our partnership cracked in two while we made camp in a grove of pines in the mountains of Colorado. When I awoke in the middle of the night to discover Jim Wilson standing over me and aiming a gun down at my middle region, I had the gist of it pretty well figured out already.
I been thinking, he said, and I reckon you’ve done taught me about all you got to teach.
Well, that happens, I said up at him. His face was a shadowed orange in the light of our fire, and the light gleamed brighter along the barrel of his pistol. Then I said, Like as not the timing of this has something to do with that bank we just cleaned out in Denver, too, doesn’t it?
I’m taking everything into account. And even if I didn’t before, now I really do believe you got no idea how come it is none of them bullets find their mark. Up til now, you may be the luckiest son of a bitch that ever drew a gun, but I reckon you never had one aimed down at you like you was a pig in a barrel.
And you’d pull the trigger on a man that way, him still in his bedroll, would you?
And not even blink, Jim Wilson said, if that’s the only way to see him dead.
That one you must’ve picked up all on your own, because you sure as hell didn’t learn it from me.