Red Lands Outlaw: the Ballad of Henry Starr

by Phil Truman

  “I don’t like that little bastard,” Henry said to Curry.

  “Naw, he don’t much lend himself to likeable,” Curry concurred.

  The day Henry and DuMer had come into town, they started looking around for cast members. Henry would play himself, but DuMer thought they could get some locals to fill in the other spots. When Henry suggested it, DuMer conceded that using actual Stroud citizens would lend some authenticity, but more importantly, they would be cheaper to hire. Some of the film actors back in California were starting to think themselves more valuable than they actually were, so DuMer brought none with him. Nor would he send for any.

  That first day in Stroud, the two men stood in the street and looked up at the store sign. Big white letters on a red background read, “Curry Meat & Grocery.”

  “This’s the store that boy shot me from,” Henry said. “Believe his name was Curry, Paul Curry.”

  “Well, let’s go see if he’s still around,” DuMer said.

  Inside, back at the meat counter, a burly man greeted them. “What can I do for you gents?” he inquired.

  “You Curry?” Henry asked him.

  “That I am,” he answered, wiping his meat greasy hands on the drape of his blood-soiled apron. He smiled back at them genially.

  “Looking for a young fella named Paul Curry.”

  “That’d be my son,” Curry answered, the smile fading some as mild concern invaded his expression. “What’s this about?”

  “Well, sir, I’m Henry Starr, and this here is Mister DuMer. We—”

  “Henry Starr… the outlaw?” Curry cut in. He moved to his right a step, picking up a meat cleaver.

  “Well, not anymore,” Henry answered. He smiled nervously as he eyed the cleaver in Curry’s hand.

  Curry’s look had become hard, intimidating. “If you’re here to get even, Mister Starr, think again.” To emphasize his statement, Curry whacked the edge of the cleaver onto the butcher block counter. “My boy only done what any citizen in this town woulda done… and were trying to do. Just so happened Paul was a better shot.”

  Henry put his hands up to his chest, palms out, continuing to smile. “Naw, naw, you got it all wrong, Mister Curry. It ain’t nothing like that. I got no hard feelings against your son. I’m out of the outlawin’ business. We’re here to offer him a job.”

  Curry still looked suspicious. “What kind of job?”

  “A actin’ job. Mister DuMer here is a moving picture producer from California. We’re making a moving picture about my bank robberies here and how bad an outlaw I was. Mister DuMer here tells me it’ll be titled A Debtor to the Law.”

  “A actin’ job?” came Curry’s incredulous question. “What kind of actin’ job?”

  “Why, sir,” DuMer chimed in. “All your son has to do is play himself. Shoot Henry here in the ass like he did before; figuratively speaking, of course. Not in the literal sense. We’ll pay him fifty dollars.”

  “Fifty dollars?” Curry tapped the point of the cleaver several times on the counter, thinking over the ridiculous offer. “That’s a heluva lot of money for pretending to shoot an outlaw in the ass.”

  “We pay top dollar for our talent,” DuMer said. He flicked an eyebrow with a long middle finger, and smiled haughtily at Curry.

  “What’s going on, Pa?” The voice came from behind the two men standing at the meat counter display. They turned to see a tall slender young man. He looked somewhat gaunt and sickly, which made DuMer frown.

  “Well now, are you Paul?” DuMer asked.

  “Yes, I’m Paul Curry.” As he looked at the two men, recognition hardened his expression. “You’re Henry Starr,” he said.

  Henry nodded and smiled, but made no advancement toward the young man, sensing his discomfort. “Yes, son, I am. But there ain’t no need to be alarmed. Me and Mister DuMer here want to offer you a job.”

  “What kind of job?”

  Henry and DuMer looked at each other, and DuMer gave Paul the whole schpeel they’d given his father. Paul looked questioningly at his dad.

  The elder Curry shrugged. “Sounds like easy money to me. I think you should take it.”

  * * *

  It turned out the same tellers were still working in both banks, as was Sam Patrick, the bank officer Henry had used as a human shield. None were thrilled to see the old outlaw again, but quickly warmed up to the idea of being in a motion picture and getting paid for it. DuMer also had no trouble holding auditions for the gang member parts, and garnering a plethora of extras. Henry had some problems with some of those picked as gang members, but, as usual, had no say in the matter.

  Lorrie Hughes, the little girl Henry had made an accomplice by buying her silence with a handful of stolen quarters, had turned thirteen and didn’t want anything to do with the filmed re-enactment. It didn’t really matter, though, as DuMer elected not to have that part portrayed in the film. He felt it showed too soft a side to Starr. Henry started to protest, but Lorrie rushed up to him, pulling on his sleeve so he’d bend down to hear her whisper.

  She cupped her hand next to his ear. “I didn’t give back those quarters you gave me,” she said softly.

  Henry stood upright and looked at her. He smiled and winked. “Yeah, I don’t see that we need to get the girl involved if she don’t want to,” he said to DuMer. The director nodded and went on to other matters.

  As time went on, Henry and Paul Curry got to be pretty good friends. They could even joke about their past encounter.

  “You was a pretty good shot with that twenty-two,” Henry had said to him.

  “Nah, not too, I reckon. I was aimin’ for your head, not your butt.”

  “Well, it was an honest mistake,” Henry said. That got a good laugh from the crew and extras gathered around them.

  “I recollect you was a bigger feller four years ago,” Henry said to Curry. “You get hurt in the war?”

  “I joined up with the Army last summer. Never made it to France, though. Never made it any further than Fort Dix in New Jersey. Come down with the Spanish Flu. It liked to killed me. Did kill a lot of fellas I knew, fellas I went in with. Seemed like they was burying them by the hundreds every day.”

  “I read about that epidemic in prison,” Henry said. “Looked like it was coming this way, but it seemed to die out before it got this far west.”

  “I ain’t totally got over it, I don’t think. Not sick anymore, but weak as a kitten, lost a lot of weight.”

  “You ain’t so weak you’d miss and shoot me in the head, are ya?”

  “Lucky for you, I’ll be shooting blanks.”

  * * *

  “And Action!” DuMer shouted from his seated perch next to the camera. He and the cameraman were on a boom raised ten feet above the street, filming the actors below. Guns drawn, Henry and three of his “gang” skulked along the walk in front of the bank, until Bill Woodard behind Henry, the man playing the part of Lige Higgins, stubbed his toe on a warped board and lurched forward, accidentally firing his pistol into Henry’s back. Henry yelped and jumped forward. DuMer hollered, “Cut!’

  Henry turned in circles leaving a spiral of smoke swirling upward before a grip ran up and tamped out the small flames on the back of Henry’s leather vest. Starr removed the vest and looked at it, which still smoldered some.

  After all were comfortable that Henry wouldn’t go up in flames, the director spoke. “Are you okay, Henry?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Henry answered. He rubbed the spot in the small of his back. “That close, even blanks can punch a hole in ya.” He gave his assailant an irate look.

  DuMer sighed and shook his head. “Mister Woodard, please watch your step, and try not to shoot Mister Starr in the back. He appears to be combustible.”

  The crowd laughed.

  “Soary, Mister DuMer,” Woodard said, grinning sheepishly; then to Henry more soberly, “Soary, Henry.”

  Henry nodded and put his vest back on. “Second time I been shot in this town,” he sai
d.

  “Alright then, if everybody is sorry and all apologies accepted, let’s try it again,” DuMer said.

  They stopped at the double wooden doors to look about furtively, then disappeared inside.

  “Cut!” DuMer said.

  Later, during lunch, Henry sat on a barrel outside The Stroud Five and Dime eating a ham sandwich. Paul Curry and Woodard occupied the bench in front of the store window, eating the same.

  “Do you two boys realize you are the onliest ones who ever shot Henry Starr?” Henry asked around his mouthful of sandwich. “And both times it was in the back.” He grinned at them.

  “Don’t believe I shot you in the back, Henry,” Curry said. “Mine was more from the side,”

  “Well, now I could drop my pants right here and prove it,” Henry said.

  “No, no, don’t do that,” Woodard waved his hand and looked away. “Leastwise, not during lunch.”

  Henry laughed. “Aw right, Bill. I won’t. But keep that piece pointed away from me. Next time I might shoot back.”

  They all chuckled and went back to their eating. Presently, Samuel Patrick, who’d joined the group for lunch, had a question.

  “How come you come back here and make a movie of your crime, Henry?” Sam, the bank officer Henry had used as a shield during the robbery, still held his position at the bank and was also hired to play himself.

  Henry chewed and thought about it. “That’s a durn good question, Sam,” he said. He took a drink from his mug of coffee. “Thinking back over my life, I believe I seen the error of my ways. Ya know, I’ve got a boy. Ain’t seen him much lately with being in prison and all, but I’d like for him, and other boys like him, to see how being an outlaw ain’t the smartest thing to do in life. Hope the message gets through to them, if they see the picture show, not to go the way I’ve gone.”

  The small group considered in silence what Henry had just said, giving a nod or two.

  “Course,” Henry continued after half a minute. “The money I’m making off this re-enactment will be at least twice what I got in the actual holdup. Actually, didn’t get none of it, as Paul here shot me and I went straight to prison. I don’t think they’ll send me to prison for acting, ’though I do believe it’s a form of highway robbery.”

  “So it’s still about the money,” Sam said.

  Henry grinned. “Yeah, some of it,” he said.

  * * *

  “Okay, that’s a wrap,” DuMer said to the cast and crew. “Thank you all. You can see Miss Sweeney at the hotel to pick up your compensation.”

  Miss Sweeney was a tall woman with a homely face and a lithe body whom DuMer had only introduced as his assistant. She carried a steno pad to which she constantly affixed notes from comments DuMer spoke to her, and she barked orders to the crew for things that needed doing, which they carried out unflinchingly. She always wore leather trousers with a leather vest over a dark tight blouse. She had a severe look, and rarely smiled; but when she did, it had more of a sneer quality than cordiality. Everyone was afraid of her, including, apparently, DuMer.

  Henry walked over to where DuMer stood talking to Miss Sweeney who towered over him, his back to Henry’s approach. “What happens now?” Henry asked.

  DuMer stopped his conversation with Miss Sweeney, and turned slowly toward Henry. Miss Sweeney glared at Henry through slit eyelids.

  Regarding him coolly, DuMer spoke after a few seconds. “Ah, Henry, my good man… Yes, well, we’ll pack all this up and take it back to California. The film will be edited, marketed. I expect it’ll be released in about six months or so.”

  “Six months?” Henry asked, a little distressed. His deal was a percentage of the proceeds the movie would produce.

  “More or less,” DuMer said. “These things take a little time.”

  “You mentioned something about an advance when we started all this,” Henry said. “I’m going to need something to live off of ’til I start getting my piece of the action.”

  DuMer looked up at Miss Sweeney; they traded an annoyed look. “Well, of course, we’ll pay you a per diem for your meals and lodging you charged here on location.” He tapped his chin with a long finger while he thought.

  “I think we can advance you… three hundred dollars?” The last part came out a question as he glanced up at Miss Sweeney for confirmation. With an icy look of disdain at Henry, she gave a slight nod of assent.

  DuMer smiled condescendingly at Henry. “That should keep the wolves away until your royalties start coming in,” he said.

  Henry did some quick ciphering in his head. If it took six months before he started getting his percentage, that’d be fifty dollars a month he’d have to live off of. He figured he could live off fifty dollars a month. “What if the movie ain’t out in six months?” He asked.

  “No chance of that, Henry,” DuMer said. “It’ll most likely be out sooner, than later.”

  “Awright, then,” Henry said.

  “Fine. Miss Sweeney will pay you this afternoon,” DuMer said, and both he and the tall woman turned and walked away.

  The next morning when Henry went to settle up with the hotel for his room and meals, he found he came up eighteen dollars short with his per diem allotment, so he had to pay the difference out of his advance money. When he went to find DuMer to complain, he was told the little bastard, his tall daunting assistant, and their motley film crew had cleared out the night before.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  No doubt about it, Hulda was a pretty girl. Henry couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  His friend E.D. Standingfox had suggested they go down to Tahlequah. It was past mid-summer, the time of the Green Corn Festival. E.D. had promised there’d be a lot of celebrating, dancing, and beautiful women. It was about a two-hour automobile trip in E.D.’s new Model T Ford, and the reveling would go on for several days.

  He first spotted Hulda in the Corn Dance, although he didn’t know her name, or the fact that they were second cousins. She moved with the second circle of dancers, the women dancers, holding baskets. They danced in a shuffling step to the beat of the drums and wail of the drummers. It was a solemn and reverential procession. She looked the part of a Cherokee princess in the long buckskin dress she wore, dyed snowy white and festooned with feathers and bright beads. Henry moved through the crowd, stepping to the inside row. He had a certain celebrity among the Cherokees, and they all greeted him and talked to him as he moved into the gathering. A Debtor to the Law had come out about a month past, and most of them had seen the movie or heard about it, but the deeds of Henry Starr had rippled through the Nation for over twenty years. He was no fabled warrior among the people, far from it; but any action which gave the white man grief, even those unlawful, gained him regard and gave him a certain hero status.

  He smiled and shook the hands and acknowledged the greetings of those who pressed around him, but his eyes always returned to her. Several dancers looked up at the commotion going on near the inner edge of the crowd, but if Hulda noticed him, she gave no indication.

  He walked toward her when the dance ended with every intention of engaging her in conversation. She glanced his way as he approached, gliding swiftly into the midst of a group of clucking women; deliberately, it seemed. Henry stopped and watched her with a look of dismay as she submerged securely into the whirlpool of older females who swept her away.

  His friend E.D. came up laughing behind Henry and slapped him on the shoulder. “Now that’s one fine looking woman,” he said. “Don’t get your feelings hurt, though. Every stud here has or is trying to get on her dance card, but ain’t none of ’em done it yet. She treats all of us the same way she just treated you.”

  “Who is she?” Henry asked.

  “Name’s Hulda Starr.”

  “Hulda Starr,” Henry repeated. Both men watched the girl’s head, which is all of her they could see, floating away from them. At one point Henry thought he saw her look back in his direction.

  “Maybe you’re re
lated,” E.D. said.

  “Could be,” Henry said. “But I know she ain’t my sister.”

  E.D. laughed and threw his arm over his buddy’s shoulders. “Let’s go get some of that fried chicken,” he said.

  * * *

  “I hear we might be related.”

  The girl jumped and looked back over her shoulder at Henry. She sat at a picnic table eating her supper. Across the table a large woman in her fifties, also dressed in buckskins, gave him a disapproving glare.

  “You scared me,” the girl said, turning back to her plate of food, not smiling.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I sure didn’t mean to do that.” He sat down on the table bench, his back to the girl’s dinner mate; putting his elbows and forearms on the tabletop, he faced the girl. Smiling his most charming smile, Henry said to her, “You’re Hulda Starr.”

  The girl looked at him and frowned. Looking down at her plate, moving some of her potato salad around, she asked, “How do you know my name?”

  Henry laughed. “Didn’t have to go far to find that out,” he said. “Just about everybody here knows your name, especially the men.”

  The girl blushed and looked over at him. “Oh, I doubt that,” she said. Henry thought he saw a smile for a second.

  “No, it’s true,” he said. “I’m Henry Starr. Thought we might be related.” He reached up and gave his hat a gentlemanly tip.

  “Lots of Starrs here,” the girl said. “It’s a big clan. All of us are probably related in some way or another.”

  Henry nodded. “Yeah, that’s true. I guess I just wanted to make sure we ain’t first cousins.” He grinned at her.

  “This is my mother,” Hulda said, indicating the woman at the table.

  Henry turned and tipped his hat to her, also. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he said. He suddenly realized Hulda’s mother wasn’t that much older than him.

  “Your father was Hop Starr?” the woman asked without acknowledging Henry’s greeting. Nor did it appear the woman held any admiration for his notoriety.