Red Lands Outlaw: the Ballad of Henry Starr

by Phil Truman

  She shook her head. “Not sell,” she said. “Peoples poor. Not have money. Sometime Trader man Smith at store take, give trade.”

  “You got any made up?” Henry asked. “I’m headed back to see my boy, ’bout your son’s age there. I’d sure like to take him a pair of those as a present. I’d pay you cash money for ’em.”

  The woman continued working with the piece of leather, not looking at Henry. He began to figure she either didn’t understand him or didn’t have any to give him. “If you got a pair made, I’d give you two dollars for ’em,” he said.

  Still not looking at Henry, she glanced over at the boy. She said something to the youngster. He sat down his bowl, rose to his feet and walked into the woods behind the hut.

  Once the boy was out of sight she said to Henry, “I got moccasin. I sell you two dollar.” She sat down her work and got up to go into the hut, returning after a few seconds with a small-sized pair. They were beautifully made. She offered them to Henry.

  Henry took the moccasins and examined them. “My, my. Believe these might be worth three dollars,” he said. He pulled three silver dollars out of his vest pocket, the last of his take from the Amity bank, and handed them over to the woman. She took the coins without giving a word of thanks, returning to her work on the unmade moccasin.

  “What name do you go by?” Henry asked her, setting the pair of moccasins down beside him.

  The woman furrowed her brow in thought. “White words say me… Talks to Moon,” she answered.

  Henry nodded. They sat in the silence of their own thoughts. After a spell she added, “Father called Hitting Snakes. Boy is Looks with One Eye.” Hitting Snakes had lowered his volume to a mutter. The boy reentered the camp, his skinny arms laden with firewood.

  “Well, I best get going,” Henry said. “Need to get further along before dark.” Talks to Moon didn’t answer or look up from her work.

  Henry stood. “I sure thank ya for the meal,” he said. Talks to Moon gave a nod. When Henry moved to put the moccasins in his saddlebag, the boy said something to him in a sharp tone. Henry turned to look at him, then to Talks to Moon with a questioning look. Looks with One Eye stood pointing at Henry angrily, questioning his mother. She responded to him quietly, but tersely. The boy stomped and got louder, his voice rising into hysteria. Talks to Moon reached over and slapped the boy several times across the face and head, speaking abruptly and harshly to him. The boy, crying, ran off into the woods.

  Henry watched the scene, perplexed. The woman returned to her place by the fire, and took up her moccasin work again. “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “You go,” she said. “Boy not like me sell you moccasins. You go.”

  Henry stood there for a minute trying to unravel all that. Talks to Moon looked at him with tear-brimmed eyes and said angrily, “You go!”

  Henry mounted and rode away. Once clear of the village, he goaded his horse into a lope. After about two miles, he pulled the sorrel to a stop, wheeled him about and spurred the horse back toward the village. He reined up next to the fire where Talks to Moon still sat, and dismounted.

  “You know, I got to thinking,” he said as he took the moccasins out of his saddlebag. “I really ain’t all that interested in these moccasins. Don’t believe they’d fit my boy. ‘Sides on second look, I don’t think the work’s all that good. I’ll sell ’em back to you for a dollar.”

  Talks to Moon stared up at Henry for some time; she looked towards the woods where the boy had gone. Wiping her hands on her dress, she retrieved one of the silver dollars from a pocket, and handed it to Henry. When their hands touched, she grabbed his and held it. “His thank to you,” she said with a grateful smile. Henry gave a quick nod, mounted up again, and rode off.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Looking down from the hilltop he could see Tulsa spread out along the river valley. It was early evening, dusk, and the lights of the town were coming on, twinkling in the still crisp air. Still some gas lights, he thought, but lines of poles strung with wires told him more electric lights shined. A few oil rigs stood on the town’s edges like tall dark skeletons. He believed the place looked bigger than the last time he saw it.

  How long had that been? Henry had wandered the red lands after he left the Cheyenne village. He’d drifted, finding work as a hand at a farm or ranch, staying a few weeks, a month or two, then moving on to the next. Chief Perry’s words on how he should give up his outlawing ways, return to his wife and son, stayed in his mind. He’d pondered it, all the guilt that roiled inside him; fought his desire to take easy pickin’s from a bank or a store in his path, much like a sober drunk would yearn for a bottle. Now he’d returned, clean and clear-headed. Had it been a year? More than a year? Henry suddenly realized he didn’t know the day or month. He could figure the season by the cool air and the color of the trees—it was fall. Must’ve been almost two years since he’d left his young wife and boy and struck out. He wondered if he’d still find them there, if he’d recognize Teddy.

  “She hasn’t lived here in over a year,” the woman who answered the door told him. She looked at Henry with suspicion, and perhaps a little disdain. “Real estate man sold us this house for a song. Told us the owner’s husband had left her and her child, and she needed the money bad.”

  Henry nodded, looking a little shamefaced. “You happen to know where she went?” he asked.

  The woman squinted up her eyes, giving him an accusatory look. “You her no ’count husband?”

  “Well, I…”

  “That poor little boy’s father?”

  “Ma’am I just—”

  “I don’t believe I need to tell you anything else. Good night, sir!” the woman said, and shut the door firmly in his face.

  Reining the sorrel to a stop under a street light, Henry pulled his watch out of his vest pocket. Just past eight. He figured Bagby would still be in his office at this hour. If he wasn’t drinking there, he’d most likely be across the street drinking in The Black Gold Saloon.

  Sure enough, when Henry dismounted in front of Bagby Real Estate, and peered through the window, he could see Hiram sitting at his desk. An open bottle of whiskey sat atop the desk; a half-full glass of amber liquid sat next to it. Henry turned the door knob and walked in.

  Bagby looked up, his expression showing surprise when he recognized Henry walking out of the shadows. He leaned back in his chair and sneered.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, the words slurred some.

  “Hello, Hiram.”

  “Law ain’t caught up with you yet?” Bagby asked.

  Henry pushed his hat back from his forehead and looked around the dark office. “I don’t reckon the law knows I’m back in Oklahoma, Hiram. But either way, I ain’t lettin’ them send me to Arkansas.”

  “Arkansas? Hell, Henry, ain’t nobody around here going to send you to Arkansas.”

  Henry shifted his stare back to Bagby. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Why, Governor Haskell denied your extradition. Your lawyer friend come around here almost two years ago, just after you left. Wanted to make sure you knew that. Said he told you that over the phone.”

  “Haskell denied it?”

  “That’s what the man said.” Bagby started laughing. “I heard you robbed a bank in Colorado. Man come in here asking about you a few weeks back. Fella named Smoak, a deputy U.S. Marshal. They figured you’d be coming back here sooner or later. Said he was partnered up with Bill Tilghman out of Oklahoma City. Asked me to give ’em a call if you showed up.”

  “Bill Tilghman,” Henry repeated, nodding.

  “Musta been a pretty important bank to get a man like Tilghman after you.”

  Henry looked squarely at Bagby. “You know where Ollie might be? And the boy?” he asked.

  “Ollie don’t want anything to do with you, Henry, or the boy. After you left them starving, she moved in with me. She’s divorced you. Can’t change a leopard’s spots. You’re still a low-li
fe outlaw. Best you just stay away.” Bagby opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a pistol, laying it on the desktop. He grinned back at Henry, picking up the glass of whiskey and downing it.

  “Guess I can understand that, Ollie not wanting to see me,” Henry said. “But I want to see Teddy. Don’t figure he understood why I left. Need to explain a few things to him.”

  “Oh, he understands plenty,” Bagby said. “I told him all about you. He’s a smart-assed little cuss, though. Whippings don’t seem to get through to him, so I’m sending him off to a military school over in Claremore. Figure they’ll pound some sense into him. He’s leaving tomorrow.” He moved his left hand over the handle of the pistol, and rested it there.

  Henry moved swiftly around the desk and grabbed Bagby by the throat with his left hand, heaving him forcefully out of his seat and up against the wall. With his left, he ripped the pistol from Bagby’s grip, smacking him on the side of the face with it. Putting it in his own grip, he shoved the barrel hard up Bagby’s left nostril, and cocked the hammer. “You listen to me, you slimy drunk. Ollie may have thrown in with you, but I aim to see my boy.

  “Now, you still live in that big house over on Archer Street?”

  Bagby, sweating and visibly shaken, tried to nod.

  “Then I’m going to head on over there. Don’t plan on staying around with a man like Tilghman after me, but I’m going to go see my boy, just the same. I’ll see Ollie, too; let her tell me what she wants to tell me. And let me tell you something about that boy. I still got friends in this town, big mean friends; I’m going to have them watch you, Bagby. And if I hear about you laying a hand my boy again, I’m gonna come straight back here and kill you. But before I do, or if I can’t, I’m going to have my friends break you up some before I get here. You understand that?”

  Bagby, breathing hard almost to a whimper, just squeaked. Henry pushed the gun barrel harder against Bagby’s nostril. “Say it out loud!” Henry demanded.

  “Y-yes, yes! Understand, understand!” Bagby sobbed.

  “Awright, then,” Henry said, not lessening the pressure of the gun barrel against Bagby’s nose. “So after I leave here, you going to call the law and tell them where I’m headed?”

  Bagby coughed and gasped as Henrys grip tightened on his throat. “Naw, I won’t do that,” he rasped.

  “Like hell you won’t,” Henry said, and smacked Bagby across the side of the head with the pistol, knocking him cold. He yanked the phone wire from the wall and bound Bagby’s feet to his hands behind him. Reaching into the man’s hip pocket, he removed a handkerchief and stuffed it in Bagby’s mouth. He shoved the unconscious man under the desk so he couldn’t be seen from the window. Turning out all the lights, he left the office, closing the door behind him.

  A middle-aged black woman answered the door at Henry’s insistent knocking. She opened it a crack and peered out at him with a look of both concern and pique on her round face. She waited for Henry to speak first.

  “I’m here to see Ollie,” he said.

  “Who you?” she asked brusquely. “What you want?”

  “I told you what I want. I’m Ollie’s husband. Now are you going to go get her, or am I going to have to kick this door open?” He was in no mood to be polite.

  “You jist hole yo’ ho’ses,” the woman said, willing to give back to him what he was dishing out. “I’ll go ax her do she want to see you. You bettah be nicer, now, or I go call the poe-leese. I got me a shotgun right here by da doe.”

  Henry backed up a step, removed his hat. “Awright,” he said. “I’m sorry, ma‘am.”

  The woman sniffed. “Thas bettah. You waits right there on the porch,” she said, and closed the door.

  When the door opened again, the first thing Henry noticed was that Ollie was pregnant. It occurred to him that this was the second time this had happened to him.

  “Well, damn, Ollie,” was all he could think to say.

  “Why’d you come back, Henry?” she asked.

  “That little bastard Bagby’s?” he asked in return, gesturing to her protruding stomach.

  Ollie moved back to slam the door, but Henry put his hand out to stop it, moving across the threshold. “Wait, wait,” he said in a gentler voice. “Let’s talk.” He could see the bulk of the black woman in the shadows of the parlor, holding a shotgun.

  “What do you want to say,” Ollie asked; her voice disinterested, angry.

  “Didn’t think you’d divorce me, Ollie.”

  “You didn’t leave me much choice, Henry. I had a child to care for. We had no money, and Hiram took us in.”

  “Don’t look like that’s all he’s done. Damn, Ollie. Bagby’s a scumbag.”

  “I’ve known worse,” she said, looking away from his stare, clutching her robe to her neck.

  “Yeah, I reckon,” Henry said. He looked back into the dark entrance of the parlor catching a glint of the shotgun’s double-barrel drooping toward the floor. “Don’t guess I can blame you for what you done. We never had what you’d call a tight marriage. I’ll head on out and leave you be, but I would like to see Teddy before I go.”

  “He’s asleep,” Ollie said.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to wake him, Ollie. May be the last time we get to see each other for a while. I’d like to give him a hug, tell him I love him.”

  The shotgun and its bearer came out of the parlor shadows. The black woman leaned the gun up against its corner by the door. “I’ll fetch Teddy, Miss Ollie. It be okay. Boy ought to see his daddy afo’ he go.”

  Ollie looked at the floor, thinking. “Alright, Maddy,” she said. She opened the door wider and motioned for Henry to step the rest of the way into the entry. The black woman rustled up the stairs.

  It was awkward in the entry. Henry held his hat, looked around at some of the trappings in Bagby’s house. “Why don’t we go into the parlor,” Ollie said at length. Henry nodded and followed her.

  He sat stiffly on the edge of the settee, Ollie in the chair opposite. “He treatin’ you okay?” he asked her.

  After a few seconds, she answered, “We live well.”

  “That ain’t what I asked,” Henry said.

  Ollie examined her fingernails, looked toward the stairs. “Hiram is… has his ways of doing things. I can’t complain,” she said tersely. Henry nodded, deciding to let it go at that.

  Maddy came down the stairs with her hand on the boy’s shoulder, guiding him in his somnambulant walk. She turned him into the parlor, stopping him in front of his father.

  Henry reached out and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Hello, son,” he said softly, smiling at the little sleepyhead.

  “Daddy?” the boy asked groggily. He rubbed his eyes with his fingers and blinked hard.

  “Yeah,” Henry said, and pulled the boy close to him in a hug.

  “Are we going back home now?” the boy asked.

  Henry put his hand on the back of the boy’s head and squeezed him tighter. “No, Teddy, I just wanted to come by and see you. Daddy’s got to go on another trip.”

  “I don’t want to stay here, Daddy. I want to go with you.”

  “I know, son, I know. And I want to take you with me, I surely do, but I can’t. You got to stay here and go to school, take care of your momma. I ain’t going somewhere a boy can go.”

  “Why not?” Teddy asked. “Please, Daddy, take me with you,” he whimpered. “I don’t like living here. I don’t like Hiram.”

  Henry looked into the teary little eyes, ran his fingers through the boy’s black hair. “I’m sorry, son. But don’t you worry about Hiram. I had a talk with him, and he agreed not to bother you no more.” He looked up sternly at Ollie, holding his stare. Her eyes flooded, and she let out a quick sob, looking down.

  He looked back at Teddy. “You hear me?” The boy nodded solemnly.

  Henry hugged him again and kissed him on the forehead. “I love you, son. Don’t you never forget that,” he said. Teddy nodded again.

  Standing,
Henry said, “I better be going.” He gently pushed the boy over to his mother. Maddy followed him to the door to see him out. Once there, he stopped and turned to her.

  “Maddy, I reckon you know how rough Bagby has been treating the boy?”

  “Yessuh, I does,” she said shaking her head sadly side-to-side. “Break my heart seein’ him whip that sweet boy.”

  “I had a meetin’ with Bagby before I come over here. Told him if I heard anything about him mistreating Teddy, I’d see he got some of that back. Maybe even kill him.” He stopped to see what the woman’s reaction would be. Her eyes narrowed and she nodded.

  “Hope that’ll scare the coward into stopping, but if it don’t, I got friends here in town who’ll take care of him. Told Bagby that, too. There’s a man named Feingold owns a jewelry story over on Third Street. I’d appreciate it if you’d let him know about anything that happens. He’ll see that it won’t happen again. I’m going to go tell him about you.”

  “I’ll do that, Mistah Henry. You can count on it.”

  “Thanks,” Henry said. He put on his hat and stepped out the door. Turning back to the woman before she closed the door, he said, “Bagby’s tied up and stuffed under his desk in his office. I’d appreciate it if you’d give me an hour or so before you send anybody over there to fetch him.”

  Maddy put her hand over her mouth, and widened her eyes. “You sho nuf did that?” she asked.

  Henry smiled and nodded.

  “Well… I ’spect I better go tell Miss Ollie… pretty soon. First I gots to go get that boy back to bed. He gots a big day tomarrah.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Henry rode southwest for no particular reason. He thought maybe he’d head for Texas, maybe he’d go back to New Mexico; he hadn’t decided. When Feingold asked, that’s what he told him.

  He drifted along, his horse at a walk. Trail weary and cold, he hunkered in the saddle bobbing in and out of sleep fits. The road was narrow, not much more than a deer trail covered with the fallen and falling leaves of the hickory, oak and walnut trees that arched over it. It rose on low hills and dipped into shallow hollows as it twisted and turned through dense woods. In the cloudy gloom of the gathering November evening, the forest stretched thick and dark in every direction. The cold dank air had the feel of impending rain.