Chapter Fourteen
Leavenworth Post
Leavenworth, Kansas • June 15, 1906
DIDN’T RELISH BLOOMER GIRLS
—
HORTON HEADLIGHT
TELLS ALL ABOUT THEM
—
BALDHEADS WERE FOOLED
—
Some of the Girls Shave Regularly and Chew Tobacco, in Fact They Aren’t Girls—A Sad Look.
Ruth Eagan was sobbing, whilst I was lying one way and the late Charles Gallagher lying the other, us forming a cross, which seemed foreboding to her, because it implied that we had gone to glory together.
While I couldn’t see anything, I could still hear the shouting and the guns firing all around me.
“What’s the number of the police department?”
“Fifty-eight!”
“That’s the doc’s telephone number!”
“Might as well call him, too!”
Horses screamed. The one that had been rode by the late Charles Gallagher was stomping, and had I been thinking right, I would have done all I could do to get out from beneath that dead outlaw and move behind that trough or inside it with Ruth and her new baseball glove. See, I wasn’t thinking much about nothing but visualizing what I’d seen out of the corner of my eye moments before that blood sprayed like a geyser from the dying Charles Gallagher’s chest.
What I’d seen was a girl, a big girl, standing beside a wagon at the train depot, working the lever of a rifle, and bringing that rifle up slowly, and aiming at the man who was pointing a Colt at me and Ruth.
“Buckskin,” I mouthed.
Buckskin Compton had shot that outlaw dead, and that’s when I recalled that conversation I wasn’t sure I’d actually heard on the train to Axtell. Now I understood that I hadn’t dreamt that, no sir. That was what I was thinking till somebody shifted Gallagher off me, sending flies buzzing. It was another Gallagher. And he was kneeling by Charles and crying out: “Charlie. Oh, Charlie!”
Then a bullet slapped the hitching rail just behind him and me, and a second dug up dirt that I could feel hit the soles of my shoes. The Gallagher who was crying aimed his pistol at the shooter and shot twice.
That’s when somebody yelled, “Don’t move,” punctuating that order with a few prime cuss words.
Then I heard water splashing and Ruth coughing, spitting out water, and softly saying my name. This Gallagher heard her, too, and he knew Axtell’s lawmen as well as a number of citizens who’d taken liberty of rifles and shotguns and revolvers inside that hardware store were closing in on him.
“You’re all that’s left. The other two are dead,” said one of the lawmen. “You’d best give yourself …”
“Not Thomas, too,” he muttered. Maybe it was the fear of prison, but whatever it was, this Gallagher, the cousin Jenks, made a dash to the water trough.
“Get away from me or the wench dies!” he ordered, his gun in his hand.
I started to sit up, planning to dive and tackle him and beat him so that there wouldn’t be nothing left even to satisfy the millions of flies buzzing around Axtell, but I didn’t get a chance, because a whistling sounded, then a smacking noise, and then a groan from Jenks Gallagher as he dropped his revolver into the trough, and the last of them Gallaghers fell onto the boardwalk in front of the post office.
The ball that Katie Maloney had thrown, which had smacked Jenks in his temple and could have killed him deader than his two cousins, rolled next to Charles Gallagher’s gun hand.
The citizens of Axtell who had gathered up and down the street went crazy.
Which was a good thing, because as I finally sat up, a drenched Ruth sloshed out of the trough, not even bothering to fetch her new glove, and sank onto her knees beside me. She pulled my head against her bosom, sobbing and thanking the Almighty that I’d been delivered. She used my given name a couple of times, which made me worry someone would hear her, but then she stopped and just stared at me with them lovely eyes of hers. She must’ve figured out that the folks gathering around still thought that all of us Bloomer Girls was truly females, so she stroked my hair and said: “Poor, poor Lucy.”
She no more than got out those three words when her ma come along and snatched the baseball mitt out of the trough and pointed a long finger at me, saying: “How could you?” And she informed me that the glove was a Number BXS—which ain’t numbers unless they’s some of them Roman numerals that I don’t quite grasp—and that it cost four whole dollars. She paused and then started to say something else, but Ruth shut her up with one word.
“Mother.”
Right then is when Buckskin, carrying not a big Winchester but his bat bag, come up to me, squatted, and asked: “You hit?”
I shook my head feebly.
Then somebody asked Gypsie O’Hearn: “I saw one of them female players shooting. Was it you?”
Gypsie replied: “You’re drunk!”
Policemen, the doctor whose phone number was fifty-eight, a photographer whose name was Condiff, and the tellers and officers of both banks had flocked to the street by now. Those who had never heard of the Gallaghers got all worked up when they realized their town had been attacked by a gang.
The mayor appeared, and he said the ball game would have to be canceled. This sure put Mr. Norris into a bad mood, but most of us understood there wasn’t no way we’d be selling many tickets or programs on a day like today. Not when the citizens were interested only in the Gallaghers and what had taken place that afternoon. Those who had witnessed it didn’t have to be coaxed very hard to tell the story over and over again.
“This’ll show Coffeyville,” one of the city boosters said, but it didn’t show Coffeyville nothing, because nobody outside of Marshall County had ever heard of the notorious Gallaghers. Besides, there was only three of them, and only two of them dead, and nobody else in town had gotten hurt. Mr. Sehy said he’d be danged if he’d put this kind of news in his paper because The Anchor’s motto was “Advertising is to business what steam is to machinery—the grand motive power.” He believed that nobody would advertise or move to a town where lawlessness ran rampant, and he didn’t want Axtell, Kansas, in 1906, to be regarded as Dodge City, Caldwell, Bloody Newton, or one of them other scandalous cattle towns back in the previous century.
* * * * *
With the game canceled, Mr. Norris told the crew to hurry and take down our canvas fences and grandstand over in Stout’s Pasture and see if they could get them on the next eastbound.
“Eastbound?” I said, and didn’t use my girl’s voice, even though I was still standing near the post office.
“Yes,” with a few cusses before and after was the answer of Mr. Norris. So that meant Maryville, Hiawatha, and St. Joseph, but at least none of them towns was Pleasanton.
I asked: “Ain’t we ever going west?”
He said: “Sure. After Caney.”
But Caney, where I’d played as a ringer two or three times, wasn’t west at all, but south, down around the border, seventy miles from Pleasanton, not far by train. I started to ask something else but shut my big mouth, fearing the judge might have recognized me and could be hanging around and trying to find out where we’d be playing—and where he, with or without the evil Widow Amy DeFee, could end my season permanent.
Then a bigger thing came along to bother me. The chief of the Axtell police said he would need statements from everybody, and our addresses, in case we had to come back to testify in the trial of Jenks Gallagher.
So someone asked: “Does anyone know where Judge Stovall is?”
Someone sniggered, saying: “I expect Miss Candy’s … this being Wednesday.”
Which left everybody uncomfortable except for Nelse McConnell, who figured out what that meant right quick. He asked the sniggering gent: “Where’s Miss Candy’s?”
“Where the North Fork of the Black Vermil
lion meets Clear Creek,” said the old codger from the post office, which makes plenty of sense, because a fellow who had to deliver the mail would know where most folks live.
“Let’s go have a look around,” McConnell said, but Waddell said it was too close to leaving time.
At this, the lawman said nobody was going nowhere till he got statements from the witnesses.
Mr. Ed Norris insisted that the Bloomer Girls go first, on account they had to catch the 532, which was leaving at 5:05 p.m.
At this, Maggie Casey glared at Mr. Norris and asked: “How were we supposed to play a game at three o’clock and catch that train?”
“If you want to run this team, make me an offer!” Mr. Ed Norris fired back.
Buckskin had to step in front of Mr. Norris whilst Pearl Murphy, Maude Sullivan, Carrie Cassady, and Agnes McGuire held back Maggie Casey, who looked like she wanted to rip off Mr. Norris’s head and then spit into the hole.
When the chief said we were wasting time, a voice said: “I’m a judge, if you need help.”
The lawman seemed obliged, whilst I felt like getting my Hawthorne and just riding as far away from Axtell as I could.
My stomach begun knotting up as that low-down, pa-killing Kevin Brett stepped over to the police chief and shook his hand, introducing hisself. He told the lawman he was willing to oversee or assist in the taking of statements.
* * * * *
Ruth was the first to tell what she had witnessed after we came out of the post office. Luckily, she hadn’t seen Buckskin shoot Charles Gallagher dead. For all I knew, Buckskin might have also shot Gallagher’s brother Thomas.
When it was my turn, I got touchy, having to put my hand on a Bible and swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then lying with the first words out of my mouth after I got asked: “What’s your name?”
“Lucy Totton.” I’d never tried to sound more like a girl than I done right then.
“Age?”
“Twenty-one.”
I was batting a thousand in the lying department.
“Residence?”
“The Kansas City Bloomer Girls.” That’s what Ruth and four other Bloomer Girls had answered before I had to talk.
“Tell what you saw,” Brett said, looking up as he wrote down my information. I wet my lips and then started to talk, trying to keep it brief. Here I was, not wearing no disguise, not even a wig, sitting before the murderer of my pa, a mad-dog killer who had known me for years, though he had never seen me decked out like some female. The judge cocked his head, and I figured I was dead, but Gypsie O’Hearn—bless her—picked that moment to roll up her bloomer leg and scratch her calf. She might not have been the most attractive female on our team, but her limbs were right healthy—you’ll remember she trapped me with her limbs on the train. What I’m trying to say is that Kevin Brett didn’t pay that much attention to me or what I was saying, especially once I explained that Charles Gallagher fell on top of me.
Quicker than some of my at-bats when I was slumping, my testimony was finished. The telegrapher who’d volunteered to help had me sign and date my statement. The judge seemed to be studying me, so I tried to remain calm and respectful as I gave that cold-blooded killer a nod and grabbed my bag and walked out of the furniture store, where we had gathered when the owner volunteered his building so folks could sit while waiting to give their statements.
Maybe things would’ve gone all right, if Nelse McConnell, Russ Waddell, and even my pard, Buckskin Compton, hadn’t given their statements to the judge, too. Because, according to Waddell, once McConnell had turned in his statement, the telegrapher had said: “If that’s a girl, I’m Carrie Nation.”
“What makes you say that?” the judge had asked.
“There’s tobacco flecks in her teeth.”
Judge Brett said: “My grandmother dipped snuff, sir.”
“But I bet she wasn’t badly in need of a shave,” the telegrapher said.
I feared that would get the judge a-thinking.
* * * * *
We traveled to Caney without incident. But during the game the next day, I kept looking into the stands, fearing I’d see either Judge Brett or the Widow Amy DeFee. Or not see nothing, and just get kilt. Well, I didn’t hit worth a fip. I mishandled routine ground balls. Overthrew to Ruth and made her jump to try to catch the baseball with her new Spalding glove, which the soaking in the trough didn’t do much harm to.
When we got to the hotel, Waddell and McConnell went off to try to find a place like Miss Candy’s over where the North Fork of the Black Vermillion meets Clear Creek. Buckskin stayed behind with me.
He pulled a chair over beside my bed, where I was curled up, trying not to shake or cry.
“Let’s talk,” he said.
Chapter Fifteen
Caney Chronicle
Caney, Kansas • June 8, 1906
The Caney Glass Company shut down its plant yesterday after the best and most successful fire of any plant in the business, and the shutting down was a couple of days ahead of schedule time, on account of the Bloomer ball game.
When Manager Thornburg went out to the four o’clock shift, not a soul was there. He searched the entire plant over and finally found one lonely fellow on duty, and he could not blow a cylinder. It was Clerk Bruce Hinkle. No one showed up, and Fred went out and turned out the fires and declared the thing off.
The boys could not withstand the temptation to see the Bloomer Girls play ball, and all were at the game.
I’d heard all of Buckskin’s talks, so when Buckskin said: “Maybe you would have rather had me let that hard-rock bank robber shoot you and Miss Ruth back in Axtell.”
I stopped my sniffling and lifted my head off the pillow, which wasn’t comfortable nohow but somewhat softer than what they stuffed the mattresses with in this rawhide hotel—it sure wasn’t straw.
“Sit up,” Buckskin told me.
I sat up, swung my legs off the bed.
“Look at me.”
Done that, too.
“Well?” he said.
“Ain’t sorry that me and Ruth … sorry, Ruth and me … ain’t dead. So, thanks.”
He gave a slight nod. “You’ve been nervous since you joined this team. So have Miss Ruth, Miss Carrie, and even the ladies with a lot of experience. To tell the truth, turkey vultures still flap their wings in my belly before every game. When you aren’t nervous, it’s time to hang up your glove and spikes.”
I looked at my fingernails, the way a fellow is prone to study them, but not to mock Buckskin, just to do something other than look Buckskin in the eye. He didn’t say nothing about it, didn’t scold me and remind me that that ain’t how ladies look at their nails. Instead, he asked straight-out: “Are you a runaway?”
My hand lowered. “My parents are dead.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Well, looking at him again, I almost started to tell him, but my lips got to trembling and that lump come up into my throat. I turned my head toward the far corner of the room, where a big spider sat in its web. I studied it a moment and then turned my head to watch the curtains fluttering in the open window—it was hot, and the breeze wasn’t doing no good cooling down the room. My neck had a crick from that pillow, so I rubbed it before turning to look at Buckskin again.
He said: “Maybe I should be honest with you.”
Which he was—unless he was lying, which wasn’t in Buckskin’s nature.
“My name,” he said, “is Ulysses Howard Skinner.” He pronounced it YULI-sees, not YOU-liss-es, but he explained that, too. “My dad wore the blue, served under Grant, but he married a girl from Arkansas and moved to Fort Smith long after the war. I was born in ’80. He insisted on naming me after his commanding general, but you can’t be called YOU-liss-es in Arkansas without getting your arse pummele
d, so I was YULI-sees, till I got sick of that. Then I became Howard … till I got nicknamed Buck. And I don’t remember how that came about, but it stuck.”
“Buck Skinner,” I said. “Buckskin.” I caught on real quick.
“Yeah. Mother’s maiden name was Compton.”
“Where did Bill come from?”
“Plucked it from the sky.”
That got me to pondering how come I’d never done that kind of considering before. Why should I keep the name Pa and Ma give me? Why couldn’t I just call myself something new? All sorts of names come to my mind, but they were names other folks had already took for themselves: Wild Bill … Buffalo Bill … Pawnee Bill … Bad Bill … Wee Willie … Old Reliable, though I wasn’t old, or reliable … Deacon, who I didn’t like on account he played for the New York Highlanders in the American League, but, dang, if he didn’t have the most awesomest curveball in baseball, unless all those newspapers and even the Sporting News was exaggerating or just plain lying. Then I thought maybe just Kid, seeing that’s what most of the Bloomer Girls called me anyway, when they weren’t calling me Lucy that is.
I asked Buckskin: “But ain’t Buckskin too close to Buck Skinner?”
He shrugged. “I use it, ’cause it’s an easy handle for me to remember. If I called myself Oglethorpe Aloysius,” he grinned, “I’d likely forget, and that can get a man on the dodge in trouble. Buckskin … well, I’m used to it. If someone called out Buck Skinner, I’d just keep on walking. I’ve taught myself to do that. Bill’s easy enough to remember. Compton was, as I said, my mother’s name before she married. And if things get hot, I can always find another name. Bill Compton isn’t the first name I’ve taken as my own.”
“What do you mean by hot?” I asked, even though I’d already guessed how Buckskin would answer that one, if he was really being truthful.
“Because there are men who’d like to see Buck Skinner dead.”
Just like there was a murdering jurist and a no-good, evil and just plain wicked, blackhearted widow who wanted me dead. Buckskin and me had a bond.
Buckskin, Bloomers, and Me Page 11