Buckskin, Bloomers, and Me

by Johnny D. Boggs

  At that moment, I cared not about the Widow Amy DeFee’s whereabouts or the score of the game. “Where are Ruth and Carrie?” I asked.

  All of us turned toward the Bloomer Girls’ bench. The players were huddled together. I couldn’t make out a single face.

  Friedman turned to the man under the bearskin. “Have two Bloomer Girls recently joined their teammates?”

  “In this weather?” The man snorted.

  “They should be here by now,” Friedman moaned.

  My heart sank. Could the Widow Amy DeFee have foully murdered the lawmen escorting Ruth and Carrie and taken my precious teammates hostage again?

  “Might’ve got lost in this whiteout,” the fellow underneath the bearskin suggested.

  “Spread out,” Buckskin ordered us, ignoring the man sheltered under the bearskin.

  Batting my eyes against the snow, I tried to make out the faces around the field, or find two girls running toward the Bloomers’ bench. Finally, I spied not my teammates, but the wickedest witch of the West, for where else would that hag be but on the bench with the Breckenridge Nine? My whole body tensed. In spite of the cold, fire consumed me. So, pulling my baseball bat out of my bag—yes, it still remained with me, professional ballist that I had become—I made a beeline toward our rival’s bench.

  The wind carried Buckskin’s cry: “Kid, no!” For he must have seen the murdering fiend, too. Like when a coach signaled me to stop at third base when I knew I could score, I paid Buckskin no mind. Down the stands, leaping onto the ground, moving through the gate near the Breckenridge bench. No one stopped me. Most of the spectators and park officials, I figured, were too cold to care.

  Wearing one of the Breckenridge Nine’s Chicago pillbox ball caps, yellow, though they called it gold, with two rows of black wool stripes and a black visor, the Widow Amy DeFee appeared to be focusing on the deputy staying out of sight—out of the wind, he later conceded—by home plate. Not me. Not Buckskin. Not Friedman. Suddenly, her head jerked toward the first-base bench, and she jumped to her feet, cursing vilely, loud enough for me to hear.

  I twisted my head to see what had agitated her. The sight of Ruth and Carrie running toward the Bloomer Girls’ bench lifted my spirits. Yes, we learned, and Friedman reported later, they had gotten lost on the way from the courthouse to the park. Their escorts blamed the weather, but I credit that chief umpire in the sky.

  The arrival of Ruth and Carrie cheered the Kansas City National Bloomer Girls, too. They might have been losing, the snow might have started blowing sideways, but this team was intact once more, though without Buckskin and me. And there was still plenty of baseball to be played, providing the umpire did not call the game because of the weather.

  Realizing the two kidnapped girls had been freed, the Widow Amy DeFee whirled, perhaps searching for Judge Brett, who was locked up inside the Greeley jail, although she didn’t know that. Then, just as the snow slackened and the wind died down—perhaps another gift from the Almighty—that nefarious woman spotted me.

  Consumed with rage, she screamed, knocked a Breckenridge player into the slush, and ran—where I blocked her nearest exit. Instead of setting my feet and playing my position, I dashed to meet her challenge, like I was coming in to bare-hand a slow roller. Only … my feet and legs flew out in front of me, I landed hard, and slid across icy sod toward the widow on my hindquarters, spinning like an out-of-control sleigh, yet still clutching my white-ash, red-stripe bat. It’s not the way I wanted to meet my nemesis, and, thankfully, it wasn’t mentioned in the Sporting News. But luck stayed with me. My bat caught my evil stepmother just below her knees, knocking her to the ground, hard, leaving her writhing in pain. I would have kept right on sliding across the diamond toward the Bloomer Girls’ dugout if Katie Maloney, leading off third base in foul territory with two outs, hadn’t run over to stop me.

  “Hey!” Katie looked down at me. “What’s going on?”

  Breckenridge’s catcher shouted, “Grove!” and rifled the ball he had just taken from the pitcher at the third-base man, Grove, hoping to catch Katie in a rundown and get her out. But Grove, staring at me, the widow, and Katie Maloney, never even glimpsed the ball as it sailed past and disappeared in the snow in left field. Louis Friedman reported in the Sporting News that with two strikes and two outs, the catcher shouldn’t have worried about a meaningless run on third base.

  Seeing it all, Maggie Casey bellowed at Katie to run. She did, and she scored, cutting Breckenridge’s lead to two.

  As for me, I planned to stove in Amy DeFee’s skull with my baseball bat, but first I needed the bat to push me back to my feet.

  The blackhearted widow, though crying in pain, managed to sit up. Her brow shriveled into deep creases as Breckenridge constables, including Carrie and Ruth’s escorts and a few others, blew their whistles while swarming onto the snow-covered field. A Breckenridge player, perhaps wanted for crimes of his own, ran for the nearest exit. The foul-murdering woman tried to stand, only to slip again on the ice. The Breckenridge hurler whistled at Katie Maloney, who, bending over before the Bloomer Girls bench, kept brushing the ice off her bloomers and stockings.

  With snowflakes driving into my eyes but bat in my hands, I moved toward the woman who helped kill my pa. The bat rose over my head, but I couldn’t see the widow well enough to bust her jaw—not because of the snow, but because of my tears. Or maybe, just maybe, I ain’t some heartless, murdering scoundrel. Buckskin’s pleading voice also squashed my thirst for vengeance.

  “Let the law handle her, kid. Don’t do anything you’ll regret. Don’t do anything that your mother … your real mother and father … wouldn’t want you to do.”

  The bat slipped out of my hands, dropped to the snow, as constabularies grabbed the widow and slapped manacles on her. They had quite a time hauling her off to jail, what with her bucking, hissing, spitting, and cussing like some hydrophoby she-wolf.

  Buckskin asked the lawmen if it would be all right for us to watch the rest of the ball game. He promised that we’d return to the courthouse afterward. With the widow raising such a ruction, the peace officers didn’t protest too much, and two sheriff ’s deputies said they wanted to watch the game, too, but I warrant they just didn’t want to get scratched up and spit on by the woman they were arresting. So the widow got dragged out of the snow by officers whose patience quickly vanished, and Buckskin, me, and our associates and escorts climbed up into the stands to watch the rest of the game. Buckskin and I took refuge underneath the old-timer’s bearskin, where we sat shivering until the bottom of the ninth inning.

  During which something happened I had never seen happen in no baseball game before. And probably never will again.

  * * * * *

  With the Bloomer Girls staring at defeat, I wondered if the Widow Amy DeFee would be allowed to collect the winnings from her bet, but quickly dismissed the idea from my mind, because I didn’t really care.

  Maggie Casey led off the last of the ninth inning. She smacked a ball that surely would’ve flown out of the park on any normal day, but wind and snow forced it into the glove of Breckenridge’s right fielder.

  One out.

  Next up, Pearl Murphy singled sharply and stole second base on the first pitch to Maud Nelson, but then Maud grounded out to the first baseman, although that sent Pearl to third base.

  Two outs.

  The snow started coming down harder again.

  Carrie Cassady hit for Gypsie O’Hearn, who was suffering near frostbite in her fingers from her valiant effort at pitching. But Carrie, having been held hostage in cave, wasn’t at her best.

  Strike one.

  That ball was a mile outside, but Carrie, nervous, swung and missed, but the ball went past the catcher, too, and over to the fence where it bounced off and headed toward the Breckenridge bench. The catcher slipped while chasing after it, which let Pearl Murphy make it home t
o score. We were down by one run.

  Strike two.

  It was hard for Carrie to see with the snow blowing in her face.

  Strike three.

  Suddenly exhausted from everything that had happened since we’d first arrived in Greeley, I slumped and groaned. We had lost to Breckenridge. The game was over. Buckskin, though, leaped from underneath the bearskin and started yelling.

  “Run! Run! Run, Carrie, run!”

  Maggie Casey hollered the same thing. The umpire stepped aside, the catcher stood up, and the Breckenridge team captain thundered: “Get the ball! Get the ball! Throw her out!”

  You see, the ball had sailed right over the catcher’s head, not that you could blame him, for the snow kept hammering his face, too, but there’s a rule that not everybody knows and that’s this: The batter ain’t out on the third strike unless the catcher catches the pitch cleanly. If he doesn’t, the batter can run, and if he reaches first base before the catcher can tag him out or throw the ball to first, and have the first baseman step on the bag or tag the batter before he gets there, well, the runner is safe at first. However, that rule doesn’t apply if there’s a runner already on first base (which, in this case, there wasn’t), unless, of course, there are two outs (which, in this case, there was). Yes, the rule has been tinkered with over the years, but that was the rule, is the rule, and Carrie Cassady ran all the way to first base before the catcher found the ball and threw it, but he threw it way too hard and too high. Carrie Cassady made it to second base by the time the ball came back to the pitcher, and he wasn’t happy.

  Tying run on second. But still two outs. Jessie Dailey’s turn to bat.

  There’s a reason Mr. Norris, that scoundrel, had Jessie Dailey selling tickets or programs more often than she played on the field. Her hitting wasn’t so good.

  Strike one.

  Ball one.

  Ball two.

  Strike two.

  I closed my eyes, and not because of the snow. Then I heard the crack of the bat.

  My eyes opened to see both the second baseman and the shortstop lunging over second base. I watched the snow spray all around as the ball rolled toward center field, and then I turned into one of those banshees. Buckskin cheered. Even the man with the bearskin jumped up and down, though he hailed from Breckenridge, so you’d have thought he’d be pulling for the home team and wanting this game to end so he could go home to a warm fireplace and hot toddy.

  Carrie scored easily, and when the center fielder threw the ball to the plate, which he shouldn’t have done, Jessie Dailey had enough savvy to run to second. She slid in well ahead of the tag and was safe.

  Two outs. Score tied. Winning run on second base.

  Ruth grabbed a bat from the bench and stepped toward the plate.

  Sucking in a breath that froze my lungs, I whispered, “That’s my bat,” ’cause it was, I recognized it. And though I had intended to bash in the widow’s brains with it, I must’ve dropped it and, somehow, it ended up over by the Bloomer Girls’ bench, where Ruth had picked it up.

  My bat was way too big for a little girl like Ruth Eagan.

  Strike one.

  Ball one.

  Good, I told myself, she was smart enough to lay off that pitch. I held my breath as the pitcher started his windup. Snowflakes swirled. I sucked in a deep breath. The wind blew. The pitch was delivered.

  Ruth swung. We all heard the crack. We saw the pitcher slip on the snow as the ball bounced through his legs, saw Jessie Dailey running toward third, rounding it, as the ball again went right up the middle into center field. Then every Bloomer Girl charged off the bench, and the Breckenridge boys, those on the field and those standing in front of their bench, dropped to their knees, and the six Breckenridge fans—not the man who shared his bearskin with me and Buckskin—stood, their mouths open in disbelief. The Bloomer Girls had come from behind to win a game they would have lost if not for that glorious dropped third strike.

  Later, I thought about how much I wanted to be there when Amy DeFee learnt that she’d not only lost her freedom but her bet. But for that glorious moment, me and Buckskin and the man with the bearskin were jumping up and down, slapping each other on the back, crying with joy. Louis Friedman ran onto the field. And Crazy Aunt Phyllis Odom, who I’d done lost track of, hollered from the top of the grandstands: “Girls rule! Men stink! Girls rule! Men stink!”

  * * * * *

  After the best game I had ever seen was over, Crazy Aunt Phyllis Odom went to the depot to fetch his Baldwin and find his fireman and return to Greeley to get the rest of his train, while the deputy led Buckskin, Friedman, and me to the courthouse. It was a good thing we went, because the Breckenridge judge was named DeFee, too —Larry DeFee—and the widow kept batting her eyes at him and trying to look pitiful. Somehow she had even managed to talk them into taking the manacles off her wrists.

  As we stood in the back of the room stomping the snow off from our shoes and clothes, the widow spotted us, and, pointing at us, she yelled at the Breckenridge jurist: “Larry, these are the scoundrels and killers!”

  She directed anger and accusations mostly at Buckskin, saying he was a murdering friend of the killer Tom Horn and that there was a reward posted on him in Wyoming, and that if anybody needed to get his neck stretched, it was Buckskin Compton.

  But Buckskin weren’t no killer.

  Smiling, he pulled something out of his pocket as he walked to Judge DeFee. “Here,” he said, and let this newspaper article get passed around to those in charge. It had run in a June edition of The Globe-Republican out of Dodge City, which, it turns out, was another reason Buckskin volunteered to come to Colorado to arrange these baseball games. It was just a one paragraph, short, didn’t even get a headline, just listed as one of the News from the Wires, and it read:

  More shenanigans in northeastern Wyoming, where an angry mob took the Kelton brothers out of jail and hoisted them to Hades with hemp. The brothers had been arrested for killing Judge T. T. Shoumacher, their uncle, who they said owed them five hundred dollars for months spent chasing the “murderer” of two of the judge’s sons, even though a grand jury refused to return a true bill of indictment because of the nature of the judge’s no-account sons, Wilbur and Thad, who will be missed in the Powder River country about as much as Judge Shoumacher, or his other son, now serving a twenty-five-year sentence in Rawlings, or the Kelton boys.

  So, Buckskin had proven to Judge DeFee, various lawmen, and the Widow Amy DeFee that he wasn’t wanted nowhere for nothing.

  After that was taken care of, Judge Larry DeFee asked me to tell all I knew. I felt like maybe this was finally justice as I explained how the two had killed my father, had tried to kill me, how they had blackmailed me and Buckskin, and kidnapped Ruth and Carrie, among other crimes.

  By the time I was finished, Amy DeFee knew she couldn’t be looking to Judge Larry DeFee for help anymore, because he turned to her and said: “If this is all true … and I believe it is … you are a vile, repulsive, mean, contemptible person who tarnishes the name DeFee and all honest athletes across the West. Take off that baseball cap, you poor excuse for a woman. You’re not fit to wear that crown of honor.”

  Buckskin and me smiled at each other as they led the widow off to a jail cell. Yet, somehow, I hoped they wouldn’t beat a confession out of her. Don’t ask me why. I wasn’t forgiving her or nothing like that. Beating up prisoners just didn’t seem right—like an umpire widening the strike zone because the batsman was a scoundrel—even when they deserved it.

  Thus ends my mostly honest account of how I avenged my pa’s foul murder in Pleasanton, Kansas, way over in Colorado just before a blizzard left a ton of snow covering a right pretty baseball field—in early August, mind you.

  Epilogue

  Cherokee County Republican

  Baxter Springs, Kansas • September 13, 1906

&
nbsp; The Bloomers sure play ball and no foolishness about it. They are not the handsomest women that ever ate Boston baked beans, but are stout, healthy, agreeable, and astute girls, who take a good-natured roast and give back as good as is sent. Our boys were fairly beaten.

  Riding this train west, Buckskin says I need to tie up all them loose ends before I send this here narrative to the editor of the All-Sports Library. Louis Friedman, who ain’t the louse I figured him for, says I have a crackerjack tale. More importantly, since Friedman knows the editor who publishes them five-penny dreadfuls, he said he will put in a word for me, as he’s certain his friend will publish this here book and I’ll make a fortune.

  We shall see.

  Regarding those loose ends Buckskin mentioned, Governor Hoch and Attorney General Jackson got the Widow Amy DeFee and Judge Kevin Brett extradited from the Colorado jails back to Pleasanton, Kansas. The rest of her gang got tarred and feathered, except them whose jaws got busted, because the good folks of Colorado figured those boys had suffered enough.

  The Kansas trial didn’t last but two days as Judge Wheeler “maintained a stern countenance”— so noted the Pleasanton Herald —and didn’t tolerate no nonsense in his court. He sentenced Judge Kevin Brett to twenty-five years at hard labor after that cur turned what’s called state’s evidence, meaning that he told the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth—mostly—about all that he had done at the Widow Amy DeFee’s behest. Three Pinkerton detectives testified, too, telling how they’d been hired to investigate the widow’s background. They found a string of crimes, under various names, she had committed before she even landed in Kansas. The widow testified, too, but it didn’t do no good, because Judge Wheeler instructed the jury that they should not let the witness’s “crocodile tears” influence their verdict. He also upheld a lot of the state solicitor’s objections and told the jury to ignore the widow’s lawyer stuttering, which he felt the attorney was using to confuse the jury and gain sympathy for the widow.