Summer of the Star

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Only briefly, though. She said she had to run home to fetch a few things, and would be back as quickly as possible. Then she was gone, leaving the front door wide open.

  I stepped out onto the porch, and looked into the darkness.

  Ellsworth hadn’t burned. As far as I could make out, either the Kansas or Texas contingent had backed down. Morco was likely patrolling the streets again, no doubt smiling, showing off, maybe beating some cowboy senseless. Perhaps Brocky Jack Norton had sobered up, paid his fine, and was doing the same. I wondered, too, if they were celebrating Billy Thompson’s escape back at Major Canton’s camp.

  I fingered the badge on my shirt. I wondered who would be the sheriff now that Chauncey Whitney was dying.

  * * * * *

  The door closing brought me out of a deep sleep. I almost fell out of the rocking chair I’d been sitting in. I hadn’t been sleeping since Whitney took that load of shot, but I must have closed my eyes and I must have slept quite a spell. I knew where I was, although I didn’t remember sitting down in one of the rocking chairs on the Whitneys’ porch. As I stood, the door opened again, and out walked Estrella, making a beeline down the path to a buggy parked in the street. I hadn’t heard a thing, until that door had shut.

  “Just keep quiet,” Estrella called out in a hushed whisper. “They’re all asleep.”

  I thought she was talking to me. Taking off my hat and scratching my head, I tried to clear my mind. A voice in the doorway cleared it for me.

  “I’m quiet, Star. I’m quiet.. The door pushed all the way open, and André Le Fevre stepped outside.

  Seeing me caused him to beam. “Hello ...”—his eyes fell on the badge—“Sheriff.”

  “Stop that,” Estrella said as she made her way back to the house with bags in both arms.

  “You need any help?” I asked.

  “I’ve got it,” she said.

  Le Fevre opened the door. He tried to kiss her cheek as she passed, but Estrella was in no mood. “Thank you,” she said coldly. “If you’ll be so kind as to return my father’s buggy.”

  “What about supper tomorrow night?” Le Fevre asked.

  “André,” she said, “I must care for the Whitneys.”

  The door closed behind her, and Le Fevre snorted out a laugh and shook his head. Pulling down the brim of his hat, he moved to me, reached out, and touched the star pinned on my shirt.

  “Major Canton told us you had joined the law,” he said, dropping his hand. “How do you like it?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Don’t blame you for that.. He gestured toward the door. “She’s a fine woman, but feisty.”

  “She’s not for the likes of you.”

  “Or you.. His grin held no mirth. “Well, she picked me, didn’t she?”

  “She doesn’t know you like I do.”

  “You don’t know me, Mad Carter.”

  “I know that you kept me in camp, doing your work, so you could go to town and court her ....”

  “Right under your nose. Which reminds me, Mad Carter, you still owe me, I don’t know ... let’s say ten dollars. But I’ll call us even. I think Star’s worth that much.”

  As the color drained from my face, he pivoted and, laughing, walked to the buggy. All I could do was watch him drive away, and then I settled back onto the porch rocker, listening to the din of music and laughter coming up from along The Bottoms.

  I must have sat there another hour before Estrella came out.

  Quickly I rose as she stopped and pulled something with black stripes from the bag she held, and thrust it toward me. “You need this.”

  It was another shirt. “I don’t ....”

  Tears seemed to explode from her eyes, and she cried out loud enough to start a few dogs barking down Lincoln Avenue: “Yours is covered with blood, Madison!”

  She was right, and then I felt bad. I moved closer to her, took the shirt from her trembling hands. I made myself put my hands on her shoulders, and pull her close, and immediately felt her sobbing and trembling against my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally, pulling back and wiping her eyes.

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  Weakly she sank into the rocker Chauncey Whitney had sat in the morning we had talked about Hagen Ackerman.

  I dropped heavily into the other. “How are they?” I asked.

  “Nellie’s asleep on the couch. I just rocked Bessie to sleep. I walked into the room to put her in the crib, and ... thought ... thought ... Mister Whitney had died ... but ..... She buried her face in her hands.

  I waited until she straightened. Awkwardly I fished a handkerchief from my pocket, let her wipe her face, blow her nose.

  “You ...,” she started to say. Stopped. Tried again. “You probably should go to the jail ... and office. I mean ... with ... Mister Whitney .... Well ... you’re a deputy.”

  I figured my place was beside Sheriff Whitney. I also figured jealously that maybe Estrella wanted me away in case Le Fevre returned.

  “He’s not good enough for you, Star,” I told her.

  Her lips became a firm line, and her face hardened. She looked into my eyes. “Madison ....”

  “He’s a killer.. The words just spilled out of me. “He’s cold-blooded, cold-hearted. I’ve been on the trail with him. I know. You’ve only known him for a few weeks. I can tell you stories, why ... well, he’s a man- ....”

  “Madison ...,” she tried again. This time I shut up. “He’s a man. Like you said ... he has faults. I know that. He has demons. I know that, too. Maybe I can change him. You’re a boy.. She reached over and touched my hand. “A sweet boy. Can you understand that?”

  Oh, I savvied that good enough. Felt the knife she’d just jabbed into my back. André Le Fevre was a man, and I was just a kid. A kid with bloodstains on my shirt from the best friend I’d likely ever have, the closest thing to a father I’d known since Papa died. No matter what Major Canton had once claimed.

  But I was man enough to wear a deputy’s star pinned to my chest. I’d been man enough to arrest the town marshal when he was shooting up a neighborhood in the dead of night.

  Standing, I looked to the skies. Saw those stars. Thought of Estrella and me during more peaceful times. “None shines bright as you,” I said.

  The tears started flowing again, and she leaped out of the chair, turned, shot me an evil look, and stormed back inside. I could hear her sobbing, and then the baby start to squall.

  I sat back down, feeling like the heel I surely was.

  chapter

  25

  On August 18, 1873, Chauncey Beldon Whitney died. I never figured out how he held on for those three long, miserable days. Nor, till that day, had it struck me how death could be a blessing. Chauncey Whitney, who had worn a badge in Ellsworth County since 1867, who as an Army scout had survived that fracas against Roman Nose’s Cheyennes at Beecher’s Island, who had kept the lid on Ellsworth all that long summer, usually using words and not lead, was dead at age thirty-one. Killed by an accidental shotgun blast by a drunken Texas cowboy who he had considered, if not a pard, then at least a friendly acquaintance.

  No Texas boys would say they were responsible. They blamed it all on John Sterling and Happy Jack Morco. Some folks said Billy Thompson should be hanged, and the governor eventually put up a $500 reward, but I don’t believe anyone ever thought he’d be caught or turn himself in to stand trial.

  As I mentioned, Ellsworth hadn’t burned down, though tensions remained teetering on a fence post between Kansas and Texas. It turned out, Mayor Miller had gotten together with Ben Thompson and negotiated a tentative, and tenuous, peace. The Texians checked their guns. Mayor Miller fired the entire police force.

  That’s something he should have done a lot sooner. Brocky Jack, Happy Jack, and those other Jacks didn’t leave town, but forted up in
their homes with enough whiskey to drink themselves into oblivion. There was one exception, however. Ed Hogue, that hard-rock lawman who had served as one of Norton’s deputy lawmen, was made the new city marshal.

  All of that didn’t last long. I mean that peace, those checked weapons. Hogue, in his new role, went and rehired Happy Jack Morco, Long Jack DeLong, and another no-account named Ed Crawford as his town deputies. Hogue was also appointed county sheriff with me has his only deputy. Just how by Kansas laws all this was possible was beyond me.

  So nothing had really changed, till Chauncey Whitney died.

  The county commissioners paid for the funeral, which included a $33 coffin. A crowd filled the Episcopal Church, overflowing into the streets and into the cemetery at the side of the church. I’ve often wondered which funeral drew more people, Whitney’s or Larry McNab’s. It wasn’t the same folks, that’s for certain. Me and five Masons that I didn’t know served as Whitney’s pallbearers. We carried his fine coffin out to the cemetery, where the preacher, Levi Sternberg, said: “Safe from the storms, free from cares, in the bosom of Mother Earth, we lay to rest the body of our late friend, Sheriff Chauncey B. Whitney.”

  I watched Estrella help Nellie Whitney up after the burial, watched her lead her to some waiting Masons in black coats, watched them escort her back home, where Bessie was being looked after by several women from town. I scanned the crowd, and didn’t see one Texian there. Somehow I hadn’t expected to, even though Chauncey had been a fine friend to all us drovers.

  So I ambled back to the office.

  Two days later, the first white affidavits got handed out.

  * * * * *

  Reckon I should tell you about those white slips of paper. Fed up with Texas cowboys, fed up with what Ellsworth called a city police force, some leading citizens—I suspect the Masons were behind it all—decided to form a secret vigilance committee. They would issue a blank sheet of paper to anyone they deemed an “undesirable element”. It meant: Get out of town, or get buried.

  Didn’t take long for word to reach the cow camps along the Smoky Hill River. Cad Pierce rode into Ellsworth to ask about the rumors that were circulating about those affidavits. Hogue told him the whole thing was a lie. Then Town Deputy Ed Crawford showed up, and said, if Pierce came looking for trouble, he’d deliver it, might even serve a white affidavit to Pierce and his whole crew. Words and threats flew, and Crawford drew his pistol and proceeded to beat Cad Pierce’s brains out.

  That’s not a figure of speech or some exaggeration.

  Hearing the ruction, I investigated and found Happy Jack Morco training the barrels of his revolvers at Neil Cane, a Texas drover I knew in passing, who had ridden into town with Pierce.

  “What’s going on here?” I said in the most authoritative voice I could manage.

  “Like you said, boy,” Morco said in a menacing tone, “this is a city matter. You’re county.”

  As I moved forward, I glanced at the body on the boardwalk, and nearly gagged. “That’s Captain Pierce!” I cried out at Ed Crawford, who was wiping down the barrel of his revolver with a calico rag.

  “He resisted arrest,” Crawford said calmly, tilting his revolver barrel at Neil Cane. “And this Rebel cur here tried to butt in.”

  A crowd quickly gathered before Crawford and Morco led Cane off to jail. The undertaker arrived to fetch the body of Cad Pierce, but some Texas drovers rode up, telling that raw-boned gent that, if he touched Captain Pierce, they’d be burying him.

  Guns drawn, it looked like the streets would be flowing with blood, but I stepped between Morco and Crawford and those mounted cowboys. “Don’t make this any worse,” I said, trying the approach Chauncey Whitney would have used. I left my revolver holstered. Just talked. Keeping the peace that way, and not the way the town marshals kept it, with guns and bullets.

  Among the drovers was Perry Hopkins. “How much longer you think this can go on, Mad Carter?” he asked.

  Another waddy I didn’t recognize added: “Run back home to Texas, boy, where you belong. Else, you might wind up eatin’ that star.”

  Sight of all those Texians sent most of the townfolk that had gathered around scurrying back to their homes or places of business. But a few men in black kept still and silent, hands hidden inside their coats. Masons. Vigilantes. Waiting to see what would happen.

  “I’ll take Crawford and Morco to jail,” I said. “We’ll let the law handle this. That’s what he ..... I gestured to the corpse behind me as something caught in my throat. “That’s what Captain Pierce would have wanted.”

  “It’ll be the same way the law handled Larry McNab’s death,” Perry said.

  “No it won’t,” I assured them. “Just take Captain Pierce away. Please.”

  One of Pierce’s men pointed at Cane. “What about him?”

  “Let him go,” I told Crawford.

  “You talk mighty uppity for a snot-nosed kid.”

  “Let him go,” one of the men in black said, “and lay down your weapons.”

  Morco and Crawford seemed to fear the man, and his companions, more than they did me.

  Once Morco and Crawford put up their weapons, the cowboys eased their revolvers into their holsters. Relief swept over me, and I thought: I might just survive this day.

  A few cowhands dismounted. Perry covered Pierce’s face with his own vest, and looked up at me. Then he stepped away, watching in silence as two of Pierce’s hands and Neil Cane loaded Cad Pierce’s body, face down, over a horse. They led him back to a camp on the Smoky Hill. They wouldn’t bury Cad Pierce on the prairie, as we had done Larry McNab, but would escort him to Junction City, and send his body back home to Texas for a fitting burial.

  Once the cowboys had left, I looked at one of those black-clad men. I didn’t know his name, not then and now, but he had been by Sheriff Whitney’s house many times during the deathwatch, and had served as a pallbearer with me at the funeral. He was the fellow who had made Morco and Crawford lay down their guns, and, to my reckoning, a leader of that vigilance committee.

  “You passing those white affidavits to Texas cowboys?” I asked him.

  He stared at me with one hard-to-read pokerface, and I matched that look until he spun, strode off, never saying a word.

  But I reckon he got my hint. He and his friends helped me take Crawford and Morco straight to the courthouse, but the judge didn’t hold them. Said he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.

  The cowboys had been right. Kansas law. It wasn’t worth spit.

  * * * * *

  That truce became null and void. Nobody obeyed the no-gun law those hot, dismal days. Not just the Texas cowboys, but Kansans, too. I bet the Episcopalian sky pilot even carried a hideaway gun. Farmers walked into the Star Mercantile and other shops carrying fowling pieces, old muskets, or at the least an axe, which always reminded my of the late Hagen Ackerman. Cowboys toted Winchester carbines, or holstered revolvers.

  Every time I stepped onto the street, I expected someone, Kansan or cowhand, to shoot me dead.

  The amazing thing was that nobody got killed. I’m not sure anyone even fired a shot for the rest of August.

  And Happy Jack Morco and Ed Crawford themselves were delivered white affidavits. Those were received on August 27th, the day the city council again fired the entire police force.

  The new city lawmen were Marshal Richard Freeborn and as deputies, Charley Brown and, one more time, Long Jack DeLong. When it came to keeping his star, that fellow had more lives than a cat. A scoundrel by the name of Tracy Grace became the acting county sheriff. He might not have been a murderer like Happy Jack Morco, or a drunk like Brocky Jack Norton, or a hardcase like Ed Short Jack Hogue, but he was rotten and corrupt to the core.

  I can’t say I got to know Richard Freeborn. I didn’t know Charley Brown, either, although I admired him for one solid fact. He killed Happy Jack Morco.<
br />
  You see, Happy Jack didn’t cotton to the idea of getting run out of a town he once practically ruled. The way the newspapers across Kansas told the story, the gunman had wound up drinking heavily in Salina, and decided to hop a K.P. back to Ellsworth. Once there, he proceeded brazenly to walk up and down Main Street with those twin Colts he cherished. While he was doing that, I found myself in Nauchville, entering the Lone Star Saloon.

  Oh, I didn’t go there to drink. Maybe I’d learned the lesson Chauncey Whitney kept trying to drill through my thick skull. I was actually delivering a letter to Sean Ronan. Sheriff Grace had made me his personal postman. So I found Ronan behind the bar, gave him the note, and was walking out the door when a familiar voice called out: “Hey, Mad Carter. Come have a drink with us.”

  It kind of surprised me that Tommy Canton would still be speaking to me. I scanned the saloon and gambling parlor, but didn’t see Major Canton, so I ambled over, smiling at Tommy, and shaking hands with him and Perry Hopkins, who was sitting next to him.

  Perry was nursing a beer. Tommy downed a shot of rye, and poured me one.

  I picked mine up, but didn’t drink it. Just stared at it, then set it on the table, and looked at my former trail companions.

  “It’s September,” I said. “Mister Justus still hasn’t sold that herd?”

  Perry’s head shook. “Last we heard, that buyer wasn’t gettin’ in till the Twenty-First.”

  “You shouldn’t have gotten fired, Mad Carter,” Tommy said, killing a shot and pouring another. Well in his cups, he was. He probably spilled two- or three-fingers’ worth trying to fill his glass. “You’d be gettin’ rich.”

  “Not at a dollar a day,” Perry said, and lifted his glass in a toast.

  I picked up my shot glass, and our glasses clinked. That made me feel good, even better when Perry smiled, but it was short-lived, because Tommy had downed another shot and slammed his fists on the table.