I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang

by Leonce Gaiter

  ~

  Next day, a stifling heat settled in. Even in the early morning shadows, warm blasts shunted cool air aside. After a breakfast of dried meat, the gang took to their saddles. Rufus turned east. He was done with the hills. As the trees thinned, the world lay out before him, indelibly beautiful because he knew that he had the power to make it his own. He stopped thinking of rallying Indians to drive whites from the Territory. That was a given. He saw himself as Redeemer. He was Callahan’s Moses, imbued with the power to free a land and people. He stopped and stared in gratitude at the magical sight, of which his own eyes might have been the almost-godly source.

  Below, he saw some specks moving across the flat land. He kicked his horse to a gallop. Surprised, the others scrambled to keep up.

  “What the hell’s he doin?” Maoma groused as he steadied himself in his saddle.

  The old man did not notice the men riding toward them. His hearing was bad. His daughter touched him and pointed toward the rising dust. Jed Ayers looked behind him, and then from side to side to identify what a group of men would ride so hard toward. He saw nothing. There was no one else. The riders headed straight for him. He had grown old in the Seminole nation, where his daughter had grown to a woman and his wife had died. Like so many others, he had expected great things from these Territories. At the very least, he expected riches. At best, riches with renown. Instead, he had farmed to little end, had dabbled in lumber and cattle to no great result, and had grown old. Now, with his daughter a woman, he did not want her chained to a man like himself—one with great plans in a land that wasn’t his because he hadn’t the mettle or steel to dream in his own. His few belongings in the wagon, he had left the Seminole nation and crossed the Creek to return to the United States. Of course, he knew of the Territory’s outlaws. But he had nothing; he wasn’t worth robbing. There were banks and barons aplenty for that.

  The Buck gang did not slow until they were right up on the covered wagon. Ayers stopped his horse and waited. His daughter clung to his arm, less in fear than in support. Her main concern was for her father. She planned to see him home, and marry well enough to tend to him for the rest of his life. His disappointments pained her deeply. It was as if he were ill, with cancerous failures and disillusions eating at him. His writhings beneath these ailments were no less aching to her for their lack of physical cause. To her, they deserved no less pity and care.

  As the five riders slowed, they circled. Maoma and Sam took the back. Maoma instantly dismounted and dove beneath the wagon’s canopy in a gleeful search for treasure. Sam remained seated and fearfully alert. He didn’t know what to expect, but with words of Garrett’s murder still fresh in his head, he knew it wouldn’t be like anything he’d done before.

  “Where you comin’ from?” Rufus asked the old man.

  “Out Wetumka,” Ayers replied.

  “That’s Seminole Nation.”

  Ayers shook his head in assent.

  “You ain’t Seminole.”

  Lewis giggled, but stifled the sound when no one joined him. They all heard Maoma’s rattling and banging from the back of the wagon. Ayers turned to look, but his daughter tightened her grip on his arm, and he thought better of it.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Home.”

  “Should o’ never left.”

  “I know that,” Ayers testily replied. “I don’t need some boy to tell me that.”

  “We just want to go back to West Virginia,” his daughter interrupted. “We’re just going home.”

  “This is the Rufus Buck Gang. I’m Rufus Buck. I killed a man yesterday and I ain’t no boy.”

  Rufus slid from his saddle and eyed the shaking, rattling wagon.

  “What they got in there?” Rufus yelled.

  Maoma jumped down holding a lady’s corset against his chest, mincingly mimicking coquettish ways.

  “What they got!” Rufus demanded.

  Disappointed at the reaction to his antics, Maoma let the garment fall.

  “Ain’t got shit,” he said.

  “We are poor people,” the daughter pleaded. “Please, just let us go home.”

  “You been a white man in Seminole and you ain’t got nothing?”

  Ayers knew this final mocking to be richly deserved, and it had extra sting coming from the mouth of an Indian. He hovered between fury and self-pity. He brandished his whip and snapped his reins to run for it. His horse jerked forward and the big wagon shuddered.

  “Whoa!” Rufus shouted, grabbing the horse’s bridle. “Get ‘em down,” he shouted at his men. Luckey grabbed the woman and hauled her roughly from the wagon. Lewis did the same for the man, practically carrying him like a child as he struggled.

  Rufus pointed his gun at them. Sam slowly slipped from his saddle. Maoma immediately drew his own gun. Sam reached for his, but settled for resting his palm on the handle.

  “Should o’ left a long time ago,” Rufus repeated. He saw something of his father’s look in the old man. A white man with nothing, he realized, looked a lot like an Indian with everything taken from him.

  “Please,” the woman said. “We won’t say anything. We’ll just get in the wagon and go.”

  “We want you to say somethin’,” Rufus replied. “That’s the whole point. You got to have somethin’ to say.”

  Maoma walked up to the woman and put his hand on her breast. The father lurched at him and Sam easily held him back.

  “Let me at her,” Maoma said.

  Rufus still had the bridle in his hand. He turned his attention to the horse. He stroked its nose and petted its neck, allaying its fear. Correctly taking the cue, Maoma dragged the woman from Luckey’s grasp and rushed her to the other side of the wagon. She did not scream as she was yanked away, though tears fell down her face.

  Shocked at his sudden empty-handedness, Luckey followed. Left holding the old man, and seeing all the others rushing after Maoma, Sam dragged the old man in the same direction.

  “You should o’ left,” Rufus shouted after them. He did not move from the horse’s side. He did not stop petting it. He smiled when it lowered its head and snorted, signaling its comfort. Rufus expected to hear a woman’s screams, but he did not.

  “Get your filthy hands offa her!” he heard Ayers shout. “I’ll kill you,” the old man wept hysterically.

  The old man reminded him of his Daddy, but if men like him hadn’t come to the Territory, maybe his Daddy wouldn’t be like he was. Old or not, poor or not, he had to learn.

  The old man did not speak again. No one spoke. Rufus heard a few whimpers, one high pitched with pain—from a woman—and a few groans from his men.

  “Hold him,” he finally heard. It was Lewis. Rufus wondered if the old man watched. He knew his father would have watched. It would have made the pain all the more indelible, as if he’d learned to live on it like most men live on food. He bet the old man watched.

  A couple of minutes later, Maoma appeared. The others followed him. Maoma was the only one who smiled, but even his smile was furtive. The others looked guiltily toward the ground. None looked at Rufus. He tried to meet the eyes of each, but only got surreptitious glances.

  He left the horse and crossed to the other side of the wagon. There he saw the woman, dirty and bedraggled, as she helped her limp father up from the ground. The old man shook his head from side to side repeating, “no no no no no no no,” again and again. That’s all he did.

  Rufus instinctively moved to help, but the woman cast him a contemptuous glance that repelled him like a blow. In that glance was every man and woman who had looked at him like he was dirt. In it was all the contempt that the Territory’s white men heaped upon his father and his mother. It was the look that made Cherokee Bill shoot a man for simply eyeing him. He grabbed her hair and jerked her face toward his and spat in it. For the first time, he saw real fear in her eyes and for the first time in this encounter he felt good. He threw her to the ground and walked away. He was furious that he had almost
wasted a kind gesture on her.

  Standing in a huddle, Lewis, Luckey, Maoma and Sam stopped talking when Rufus reappeared. They watched him, assuming that he had partaken as they had. They looked for a sign that it was true, but saw only anger. They knew what they had done to a woman and all their lives they’d heard that it was wrong, but still they thought they should celebrate. They were outlaws and this is what outlaws did. They didn’t know how to respond. Should they feel proud? Redeemed? Had it been right, or wrong?

  They watched as Rufus climbed on his horse and headed east. They kept hoping for his blessing on their venture. But he gave them nothing. Silently they followed, dissatisfied, as if they’d been robbed of a joy that was their due. There should have been a celebration. Maoma would have liked to further ransack, and perhaps even burn the wagon. Luckey and Lewis had, during Rufus’ absence, briefly wondered what money or other wealth the old man might have hidden. They had hoped for a chance to find it. Riding along behind their glum, silent leader, the boys felt dutiful, not free. They looked forward to the next encounter—which they felt sure would be more satisfying.

  Rufus’ anger did not abate. The rebuff from the old man’s daughter slashed at him like a whip.

  Later that day, heading toward Berryhill Creek, they spotted a lone white man on horseback. The four gang members waited, almost breathless, desperate to unleash the euphoric geyser Rufus had artificially capped during the Ayers encounter.

  Without a sign or signal, Rufus galloped. Mouths and eyes widened in glee as the gang whooped and dust flew beneath the horses’ hooves. Seeing the horses barreling toward him, the lone rider tried to run, but his horse was no match for the Rufus Buck Gang. He stopped when they passed him, cocooned in dust as the five riders circled. He raised his hands in submission.

  “My name is Jim Shafey,” he said loudly, as the horses slowed around him. “I ain’t armed. I got no gun. You can take what money I got.”

  Rufus pulled his Winchester from its saddle holster.

  “Oh please God no,” Shafey pled as the barrel pointed at him.

  Rufus swung the gun around and used the butt to knock him from his horse.

  “Clean him out, boys,” Rufus sang.

  The gang swarmed on him—turned out every pocket, removing his boots, and touching every inch of his body as if exulting in their ability to do so.

  “Don’t forget the horse,” Rufus called.

  Lewis abandoned Shafey and rifled the saddlebags.

  Maoma backed away from the melee fondling a gold watch. He could tell it was real gold. No one could have told him different. He’d never touched gold; never seen it. Luckey and Sam stood counting fistfuls of crumpled bills.

  “You know this is Indian Territory,” Rufus said.

  “I’m a walnut log man. This is logging country.”

  “You ain’t Indian. You ain’t got the sense to know you don’t belong someplace called ‘Indian Territory’ when you ain’t Indian?”

  Shafey didn’t know what to say. “This is good logging country,” he repeated helplessly.

  “Take his clothes off him.”

  “I got his boots already,” Maoma announced as he dove at Shafey. They took his belt, his pants and his shirt. Moama ripped his drawers off of him. They left him his socks.

  “Whoo hoo, look at that little thing he got,” Maoma hollered.

  “Get out,” Rufus said to Shafey. “Any blood you leave behind is pay for what you took.”

  “Cut him up,” said the usually silent Sam as he stared at the naked white man. “Kill him.”

  Sam’s outburst amazed them, as did the malicious snarl he wore. During the ensuing, shocked silence, though, his words came to seem like sanction.

  Pleased for the first time since he killed Marshal Garrett, Rufus slid from his saddle. He traded his rifle for a knife. He approached Shafey. He touched the hairy white skin as you would an animal’s—as you would something curious and alien. Then he slid his sharp knife across it. The skin opened like a flower and blood oozed. Shafey gasped at the initial sting and grimaced at the growing pain. He turned to run but careened into Sam who grabbed his arms. Maoma and Luckey pointed their revolvers at him.

  “You gonna kill him?” Lewis asked softly, unable to mask his unease.

  Luckey lowered his gun as if in deference to his big friend’s disquiet. Rufus looked again at the bleeding, naked white man amongst them, so dissonant, like a gasping fish in the treetops.

  “Okay,” Rufus decided. “We’ll vote. Who says we kill him?”

  Sam and Maoma flung their hands in the air.

  “Who says we don’t?”

  Lewis slowly raised his hand. Luckey followed.

  Rufus made a show of examining Shafey. He looked him up and down, walked a thoughtful circle around him. He lifted Shafey’s penis with his knife. Shafey gasped at the gesture.

  Rufus set the knife edge, already wet with blood, against the white man’s stomach and pulled it slowly against the skin, digging deeper and pushing harder until his knife point disappeared deep into the soft flesh. The skin and the muscle beneath split like cloth. Blood poured down his nakedness. Shafey’s mouth opened in mute agony.

  “We keep him alive,” Rufus said. “Like the others. So he can tell.” He pointed the knife at Shafey.

  “What Territory is this?” Rufus asked as the blood wept down the white skin and the wound gaped like a hungry mouth.

  “Indian Territory,” Shafey gasped.

  “Who don’t belong here?”

  “I don’t belong.”

  Rufus slashed the knife across Shafey back. He screamed.

  “What you gonna tell other folks like you?”

  “They don’t belong.”

  He hacked the blade’s edge into Shafey’s thigh as if he were chopping wood. He had to yank to pull the knife free. Howling, Shafey fell. Sam let him.

  “Tell ‘em it’s the Rufus Buck Gang,” were the last words Shafey heard.

  * * * *

  Bill Swain did not look toward the hills. He needed food and he needed work to get it. That’s all he thought about. He didn’t know how far Okmulgee was, but from the last set of directions, he planned to get there by nightfall.

  Because he did not look toward the hills, he did not see them coming.

  About a half a mile behind her father’s wagon, Theodosia saw the dust cloud. She imagined it heralded magic and ghosts. Spotting horses’ flying manes and sweat-shiny coats, she was satisfied. They looked like nothing she had ever seen. She’d never seen them pushed so hard, their mouths open and their hooves whipping toward her in a pounding blur. She stopped and watched as they neared her father’s wagon.

  The gang had a template for taking lone travelers. They descended at breakneck speed and didn’t slow until they had run their prey to ground. Bill Swain found himself surrounded by steaming horses and brown men. The very sight of them incited fury.

  “What the fuck you want?” he demanded.

  As the men surrounded her father’s wagon, Theodosia watchfully strolled toward them. She saw three guns pointed at her father. She saw his anger. She liked what she saw.

  “I ain’t got shit,” Bill Swain raged. “I ain’t got food to eat so it’s a fool who tries to rob me.”

  “What you doin’ in Indian Territory?” Rufus calmly asked.

  “What the fuck is it to you?”

  “It’s my land. We the Rufus Buck Gang.”

  “I don’t care if you Jesus goddamned Christ, I still ain’t got shit an’ you can just get on.”

  Rufus noticed the approaching young girl. The gun fell from his hand. The panicked Maoma dove spectacularly from his horse to recover it. Rufus gaped, open mouthed, as if witnessing the unimaginable. All eyes followed his to rest on Theodosia. Her blonde hair, even dulled with dirt and grease, shimmered yellow and gold. Barefoot, her dirty dress barely fell to her knees as she concentrated all of her attentions on using one foot and then another to roll a rounded rock ahead of h
er. She seemed to have forgotten the men with guns.

  Rufus jumped from his horse and watched as she came closer, expecting the heat to shimmer and wash her away. But she came closer and she was real. He recognized her—from her hair to her skin, from her mouth to her unbelievably light brown eyes—it was her, covered in the Territory’s dust and dirt as if the earth itself had thrown her up. It was his Angel.

  When she reached the wagon, she abruptly raised her head and carefully regarded each of them, one by one, as if expertly examining goods for barter.

  “What they want, Pa?” she asked innocently as her eyes fixed on Rufus.

  “Money,” he replied. “All any bunch o’ niggers and injuns want and what I ain’t got.

  “Shut up,” Rufus said to Swain, eyes on the magic girl as Maoma literally placed the gun back in his hand and, scared that it would fall again, closed Rufus’ fingers around it.

  “What you mean, shut up…”

  Rufus blindly shot his gun in Swain’s direction, his eyes never leaving Theodosia, who grinned as her father ducked and covered his head as she had done so many times before. Rufus smiled back at her. He had recognized his Angel, and now, she had acknowledged him.

  “I know you,” he said.

  “I ain’t seen you before,” she replied, swaying from side to side. “You shot at my Daddy.”

  “I didn’t hurt him.”

  “Could you?”

  “If I wanted.”

  She looked at her father.

  “I saw you in a dream,” Rufus cooed.

  “Was my Daddy in your dreams?” she asked.

  “Girl, get up here!” Swain yelled.

  She waltzed slowly toward Rufus. She reached out and picked up his arm. She examined his hand as she would an odd piece of stone. “You’re a nigger,” she said softly.

  “I’m Creek, too,” he replied.

  “My Daddy hates niggers.” She stroked the brown skin on Rufus’ hand as if it were velvet.