by J. Lee Butts
You go and hang two men, and I can guarantee the act gets people’s attention, sobers them up pretty damned quick, no matter how much coffin varnish they’ve consumed. Got mighty quiet under that tree limb for a spell.
I pushed my way to a spot near Jack and said, “Where’s Nance and the rest of your family?” Don’t think he heard me. “Tell me where she is, Jack. Maybe I can still save her.”
Mose elbowed up to my side. “He be gone, Lucius. Already be in another place.”
I spotted the hand holding the quirt as it drew back and whistled forward. But that blink of time lasted long enough for Nance’s brother to look down at me with glassy eyes and say, “You’re too late, Dodge. It’s all over.” Heaven’s judgment snatched him out of the saddle. His boot brushed against my cheek like a lover’s kiss.
Lynch party held Mose and me at gunpoint for near an hour. As one of our guards put it, “Just to make certain them as we’ve done went and hung is good and dead.” Once the rabble seemed satisfied with the outcome, I tried to get them to cut Jack and his friends down, so we could take the bodies back to town for burial. The mob wasn’t having any of it. They even dragged Jimbo Pine’s corpse out of the rocks and strung him up too. Someone scratched the misspelled message “Theaves and Merdurers” on pieces of rough butcher paper and attached them to the hanged men’s vests.
Posse finally gathered up its wounded or dead, and headed back for town. A pretty solemn lot by then. Mose kept saying, “We’ll come back later, Lucius. Let it go for now.”
Two or three miles down Little Agnes Creek from the Nightshades’ place, we ran upon a scene so horrific, it still fills my nightmares. In a sheltered hollow near the slow-moving stream, fifteen to twenty of the yellow-bellies who’d crawfished from the gunfight with Jack and Chalky lounged about on saddle blankets like they were on some kind of solemn-faced picnic.
Drunken oaf named Baxter Toomes, who owned a ranch near Reno, staggered forward and bragged on their handiwork. “We caught ’em doublin’ back toward their house. Guess they didn’t realize we’d done went and burnt ’em out. No need for you law-bringing sons of bitches now. Took care of the thang ourselves.”
Dusky, Nance, Caroline, and Martha swung, broken-necked, from the limb of an enormous live oak. Brother Arch, trussed like a slaughtered animal, knelt beneath the lifeless women. Someone had shot him in the back of the head—execution style.
Of a sudden, time turned into syrup and the day got so quiet I could hear violent thoughts swarming around inside my brain. Behind me someone muttered, “Good God almighty.” Mose grabbed my arm and said, “Take care, my good friend. Take care.”
One of the liquor-soaked yobs I couldn’t see said, “Ain’t gonna be no more fiddle-playin’ and belly-rubbin’ out here on Little Agnes Creek, by God. Guess these ole gals done lifted their dresses and danced their last dance round these parts. Dancin’ with the devil now. Right where they should have been all along. Yessir, dancin’ with the devil.”
Guess I must have gone crazier than a sunstroked lizard. Jumped off Grizz, pulled my big bowie, and went to hacking at the rope holding Nance’s body. Something whistled by my ear, and the world went black on me again. Didn’t wake up till late the next afternoon, stretched out in one of the Sweetwater jail’s bunks. For a few seconds, my mind played tricks on me, and I went to thinking as how maybe the whole business was nothing more than a monstrous nightmare. Then I felt the pain in my head, the ache in my side, and knew the truth.
Crow Foot sat in a chair he’d dragged into the cell, and fought to keep his eyes open. Through rubbery lips I mumbled, “When did you get back, old man?”
Startled, he snapped upright, scratched his chin and said, “Early this morning. Been keepin’ you company ever since.”
I tried to sit up, but stagecoach-sized drums pounded inside my skull, and invisible hands pulled me back to the pillow. My old compadre lifted a damp rag from my brow and replaced it with a fresh one.
“Got quite a lump on your already abused noggin there, Lucius. Way Mose told it, you was tryin’ to cut the oldest Nightshade gal down when your former running buddy, Judas Tierney, darted out of that pack of rope-swinging dogs and whacked you from behind.”
“Thought I ran his sorry ass out of town sometime ago.”
“Well, he musta been lurkin’ around in the shadows all along. Guess he seen his chance to get a dose of retribution and took it. Mose said Bob Horton jumped on Tierney and damn near beat the poor chucklehead to death, right on the spot. Ain’t nobody seen ole Judas since.”
“Where’s Boz?”
“Mose took him out to the hanging trees. They’ve been gone all morning. Them bodies still out there swinging, I suppose. Seems once the deed got done, no one had grit enough to cut ’em down and bury ’em. Now the whole town’s too scared to do anything. ’Fraid they might be next, I expect. Boz wanted to settle on anything we could do to kinda make what happened right by them poor dead folks. Man was madder’n seven kinds of hell when he rode out. Sure would hate to see what’s left of anyone brave enough to cross him today.”
Of a sudden, through the fog of pain clouding my tortured brain, a thought came to me that I couldn’t account for some of the Nightshades. “Anyone know what became of the three youngest of Nance’s brothers and sisters—Judith, Jesse, and Analisa?”
As Crow Foot pulled a pocketknife and picked at his fingernails, he said, “Posse found ’em hiding in the mess-keet not far from the home place out on Little Agnes Creek. Some of those blood-crazed bullyboys musta not seen enough death for one day. Wanted to string them kids up too. Heard Mose, Burton, Nate Macray, and a few more good folk who still had their saddles cinched down nice and tight, wouldn’t allow the deed. Hear tell Marie Hickerson has the kids now. Rumormongers are sayin’ she’s made arrangements for some of her relations up in Chico to take all three of ’em.”
I’d heard all I wanted for a spell. Napped off again for another hour or so. About the time I got able to stand and move around, Martye Mckee showed up. She flew into the office and grabbed me like a drowning swimmer on the way down for the third time.
Shimmering green eyes floated in pools of tears when, with forced formality, she said, “I have to leave, Lucius. There’s no way we can make the ranch go without Pa. Texas is mighty hard on women, especially those with no man in their house. We have kin in Shreveport. One of our neighbors, Mr. Amos Tolar, along with his three sons, has offered to deliver us to the bosom of our relations. I fear if we don’t go, Mother might loose her mind. She’s not acted right in the head since Pa’s death, and I can’t take care of her, and the kids, alone.”
Something in her eyes begged for help I couldn’t give. Certain she wanted me to offer marriage, or anything that would keep the inevitable upheaval confronting her from happening. All I could say was, “Guess I’ll never get to see what a barefoot girl riding a pony Comanche-style promised to show me out behind the church house. Will I?”
Disappointment and resignation crept into her voice. “No, I don’t guess you will.” She flashed me a clenched, bitter smile, kissed my cheek, and added, “If God’s willing, maybe we’ll meet again someday. In the meantime, I’ll pray for a future of more favorable circumstances, and that you won’t forget the kisses you stole off a barefoot girl from Sweetwater.”
Nothing much left to say. The uncomplicated assessment of her familiy’s situation, and our budding, but doomed, relationship, didn’t leave me anything in the way of room to wiggle. Clung to each other for as long as we could. Then, less than five minutes after she’d blown into the room, I stood in the dust-laden street, out front of the jail, and waved good-bye as two wagonloads of kids and belongings rumbled across Walnut Creek Bridge, and disappeared. Just like that, she was gone. Never saw her again.
Boz and Mose came dragging in an hour or so after beautiful Martye vanished from my life forever. Stricken look on Tatum’s face told the whole story. Tried to speak with him, but he waved me off and hustled over
to Hickerson’s. Took several more days before we could round up three spring wagons and a like number of wooden crates, large enough for whatever might be left of nine corpses.
Boz tried to make me stay behind the day he, Crow Foot, and Mose went out to collect the bodies. And, while my wounds still had me stove up and limping around like I was born ten years before Methuselah, I made it as clear as rainwater he’d have to shoot me in the foot to keep me from making the trip.
But Sweet Weeping Jesus, I’d give anything I have today if I hadn’t forced that particular issue. Worst piece of work I’d ever done, up till then, or for most of my life afterward. Poor folks were pretty much nothing but festering gobs of worm-riddled rot. We got them down anyway. Pulled a wagon beneath each limb, chopped the ropes, and let them drop. Put three in each box.
Nailed the last lid down and Boz said, “No point taking this gruesome cargo back to Sweetwater. I’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, not to try and plant ’em in the town’s cemetery.” So, we spent most of the next day on Little Agnes Creek, near what was left of the Nightshade house, digging a hole big enough for those uncommon coffins.
That night, after we’d all bathed and scrubbed ourselves raw in an attempt to rub away the sickly smell of death, we sat in the jail and polished off two bottles of bonded-in-the-barn tornado juice. Talk commenced hot and heavy as how we should arrest everybody in the county who might’ve had anything to do with the lynchings.
But sometime around the darkest part of midnight Boz said, “Naw, we’re just gonna have to lay back on this one, boys. Messages comin’ my way indicate nobody’s gonna testify against nobody about nothing to do with the ‘Nightshade incident.’ Folks are petrified scared. Don’t know whether you’ve noticed or not, but lips round here are clamped together like the lids on seal-tights. Only three survivors have vanished. Heard they got sent to Chico, but I cain’t get a straight answer on the question when I nerve up enough to ask.”
After a few seconds of stunned silence Mose said, “Mighty sour pill to choke down for you fellers. But I’ve seen as much before—lots of times. Mob done had its way, and that’s the end of this story.”
Well, not exactly. Boz and me worked like field hands, for almost three weeks, in an effort at getting someone to step forward and offer to testify as to what occurred that lethal day. Overwhelming opinion expressed by everyone we talked with went something along the lines of, “Well, we don’t know anything about those killings. Weren’t there when they happened, if such horrors took place at all. Besides, sounds like Old Testement justice prevailed, by God. People who killed Lenny Milsap deserved to die.”
Pointed out to some of them as how I’d been present for the event, and seen them in attendance myself. To a man, everyone I accused said, “Well, that’s nothin’ more’n your word agin’ mine, ain’t it, Ranger. Besides, I’ve got lots of witnesses as’ll testify just the opposite. Say I was in Shorty Small’s all day.” Boz just shook his head and finally gave up trying.
In the end, Crow Foot handed his sheriff’s badge to Moses Hand, and we saddled up and headed back to Fort Worth. No one came out to say good-bye, or wish us well. Not even Burton and Marie Hickerson. Pretty sure everyone in Sweetwater was gladder’n hell to see us go.
EPILOGUE
DON’T KNOW WHAT Boz told Captain Culpepper. Whatever he said must’ve worked. I didn’t hear another word about the matter from either of them—leastways, nothing official or informed. As the years passed and piled up, gruesome rumors, labled as legends, filtered around about those lynchings. But that’s all it ever amounted to—rumors and legends.
Within a few days of our return to Company B’s headquarters, Grizz and me struck out for the Indian Nations. Reports from over Fort Smith way had it that One-Eyed Whitey Krebbs and Erasmus Delaquoix were headquartered in the Winding Stair Mountains. The Light Horse police believed Whitey and Raz had robbed and murdered a schoolteacher named Richard Gill from Tuskahoma. Mr. Gill sometimes worked as an amateur biologist who studied cotton boll weevils, or some such nonsense.
Seems Gill wandered out in the big cold and lonely, hunting for bugs in the wrong place. Whitey and Raz caught him up short. Killed the poor man, deader’n Julius Caesar, for his saddle and a pair of boots. Tried to hide the body under a log, but left the feet sticking out. Whiskey-drinking sport named Tuney Bailey happened along and spotted the corpse.
I scoured the area around Tuskahoma for a month, and never did discover hide or hair of Whitey and his murderous partner. Eventually came to the conclusion that maybe the locals were mistaken when they identified the same men who’d murdered my father as the killers of Richard Gill.
Wag put Boz and me on the trail to San Augustine, upon my return from the Nations. Life-long disputes, between the Wilbarger and Duckworth factions in the east Texas area known as the Redlands, had bubbled up into some of the worst feuding anyone had seen in years. Didn’t take long for the urgencies of the present to push the past into a dark, sheltered corner of my heart and mind. Never forgot what happened to the Nightshades, but found any reason I could not to think on it much.
Bumped into Moses Hand in Fort Worth some years after those awful events. We sat down in the Delaware Hotel’s bar to pass the time and have a drink. He said, “Stayed on as sheriff, you know. But Sweetwater never recovered. Somehow, seemed most like the town done kilt itself with all them hangings. Folks drifted away. Never came back. Mr. Hickerson and Shorty Small closed up they places the same week. Packed my belongings and left, right after that. Heard tell Mr. Hickerson’s conscience beset him something awful. Some told around as how he put a pistol in his mouth and ended the misery not long after he and his missus scampered out.”
“Ever go by the Nightshade place?” I said.
He twirled his glass in the wet circle on the table. “’Fore I left town, checked on the graves we dug over on Little Agnes Creek. Couldn’t really find them, for certain sure. Truth is, you’d never know anyone had ever set foot on the place. Kids all ’round town started calling the spot where the women wuz strung up Hangman’s Holler. Said it were haunted. Talked to several young’uns what swear they seen a fair-haired girl, dressed like a man and wearin’ pistols. Said she looked right pitiful, and lost. But you know how kids is. Could just be their ’maginations working at ’em. Ain’t been back in years. Hear tell nothing but empty buildings, and windblown dust, left of the place these days.”
We stood outside the Delaware’s main entrance, shook hands, and said good-bye. Mose turned and started away, but stopped and said, “I know you and that gal Nance had almost become somethin’ like friends, Lucius. Not a day goes by I don’t think on her and them other poor women. And how we might have been able to save them. Plagues my dreams, you know. Plagues my dreams.” He lurched away like a man lost in thoughts of dreadful nightly reveries.
Well, now you know the dreadful tale. Lucius By God Dodge’s deepest, darkest, most carefully guarded secret. Never breathed a word to anyone before this. Never even mentioned the gruesome episode to my wife, and, hell, I told that woman damned near everything—from my wild days in San Augustine, to the Salt Wars over in El Paso, and a lot more.
I’ve scribbled my last pencil to a stubby nub. Big ole chunk of gum eraser’s almost gone, done rubbed out so many misspellings and such. But I’ve still got three or four of them Big Chief tablets left. Noticed something odd lately. Once I started this process, nightmares of my own, that’d pestered me for over fifty years, disappeared. Guess maybe I’ll have to write out some more of my adventures. ’Cause like Tilden said, “You never know but what somebody just might publish one of these tales.”
More important, to me anyway, the ghost of Nance Nightshade stopped coming to the foot of my bed every night. Could be the poor girl’s spirit has finally found some much-needed peace just by knowing her tragic story got told.
The Reverend Ellis P. Thunderation Jones preached a mouthful on how confession is good for the soul. If I can put a few more of th
e apparitions that parade through my slumbers to rest by telling their stories too, guess my initial stab at writing will be worth it, don’t you think?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J. Lee Butts left the teaching profession in 1981 to seek a career with IBM in Los Angeles, California. After six years with Big Blue managing customer relations for MGM, 20th Century Fox, Orion, William Morris Agency, and other large entertainment accounts, he left the company and worked for a time in the public sector.
Jimmy faithfully attends weekly meetings of the DFW Writer’s Workshop in an ongoing effort to hone the skills required of accomplished authors. His previous Berkley novels are Lawdog, Hell in the Nations, and Brotherhood of Blood. Other works include nonfiction titles and short pieces for various magazines and reviews. Butts now makes his home in Dallas, Texas.