by H. H. Knibbs
An abundant crop of silky chestnut hair topped the forehead, revealed more and more by the almost imperceptible recession of his hairline, forming a gentle concave curve. His nose was straight and thin. This was a feature hardly ever noticed for long, for Ben’s eyes, large, deep-set under heavy but not bushy brows, took command of his face, dominated it as if by an unseen hypnotic presence, changing its character from one instant to the next. They were relaxed, open, warm-glowing eyes with his family, and among his friends. Then they seemed to be light brown with just a tinge of blue.
When Ben was in what he called a “fuss“—a disagreement that could lead to words and then to action—his eyes seemed to congeal in their sockets, losing all semblance of the warm tones that were concealed deep within. The men who faced him during those moments remembered Ben Thompson’s eyes as gray, with a hard, icy glow in the middle, burning like the fire of a diamond amid the flat, neutral gray—the gray of chilled steel, gray of marble, tombstone-gray, the palled gray of the casket, the color of death itself.
And those who knew him at poker, or at monte or faro, remembered occasional glimpses of grayish-blue behind the curtains of his lids, drawn down to a slit that permitted his eyes to see all they needed to see: the cards, the tense hands of the men at the table, at their money or at their pistols, the forecast in their faces. His own face was a mask, a life mask, held blank by nerves and muscles under the spell of an iron will. His lawyer, William Walton, said Ben’s eyes were blue.
Men who had known Ben for a long time spoke of his one soft streak: a leaning toward the underdog, a kind of protective empathy, born perhaps of his own defensive attitude as a child and youth, a need to prove himself on his own merits. And to overcome the burden of the lack of guidance, of meager schooling, and of the indifferent or actively hostile attitude toward his father, by those who regarded the elder Thompson as a weakling or a pathetic failure at best, a wastrel drunkard at worst.
Ben was always ready to listen to any hard-luck story, and to respond with help. This was true with respect to casual acquaintances and even strangers. As to his friends, his protective and devoted attitude reputedly reached the point of obsession, and he would drop everything to go to the aid of his brother, Billy, four years younger than he. With all this, too, his friends commented on a longing he had for acceptance, for a compensating place of respect and responsibility.
Men of limited resistance or effectiveness were known to seek the friendship of Ben Thompson as a guarantee that they would not be bullied or mistreated. He was, to them, a symbol of security. Those who were tempted to push Ben’s friends around thought twice of it, for they knew they might have to answer to him. He felt particularly strong about people ganging up on an individual, and some of his paradoxical behavior had no other explanation than this.
Ben Thompson, at age twenty-five, faced the post-Civil War world of the Southwest with these assets: a strong, generally likable, even charming personality; a sure-fire speed with the trigger that responded as if geared to the small, almost feminine hands—hands like cat’s paws, velvety soft, or a fury of claws. His experience was threefold: the trade of a printer, a rider with cattle, a man of the sporting world, as keen about the cut of his coat as he was about the cut of the cards. His was the choice to make: a daily grind for steady weekly wages; adventure on the trail where physical hardship was balanced by the thrill of ever-present danger, meat for one man, poison for another; or the life of a professional gambler, which could bring comfort with a minimum of effort, and in which both his personality and his bullet-hurling talents could serve him well.
Ben’s conflict within was that of the age in which he lived, heightened by his own sharpened skills: to take full advantage of the breakdown of law and order and feather your nest, or to side with those whose passion for law and order seemed to go beyond the realm of reasonable necessity. Their urge bordered on a desire to keep people in line, an almost evangelistic compulsion to squeeze the individuality out of each individual—for his own ultimate good, so they said, and for a collective community security known as peace.
In choosing the profession of a gambler, Ben might give some satisfaction to both impulses, for to be a gambler in the era of the West’s building carried no, stigma. It was another business, in the field of recreation or amusement, and many an honorable career of devoted public service had its start when a man showed his fiber in a tight spot at a faro table.
After serving two years of his sentence Ben was released by the civil authorities who took over the government from the Reconstruction occupation forces. Then the Coombs murder charges were revived. Ben was tried by a civilian jury and acquitted.
CHAPTER 21
Ben Thompson completed his professional education in post-Civil War San Antonio. He took his Master’s Degree, so to speak, in plain and fancy gambling, notably faro and monte and poker and blackjack. And he qualified for a Doctorate in the handling of the six-shooter. By this time his proficiency in the technique of pistol-throwing had developed to the point of complete confidence and-authority. There had been a brief period when he followed the general custom of pulling out a pair of revolvers. For it was a two-gun world in which he lived. But from here on out, even when he occasionally carried two revolvers, one was a spare. Ben Thompson could get by using only one pistol at a time. He was that good a shot.
For the special skills that Ben cultivated he could find no better school than San Antonio after the Civil War. San Antonio was the big town of Texas, then in the throes of Reconstruction re-growing pains. Texas was crowded with cattle, and men came from everywhere to take them. A pistol, a rope, a horse, and a branding iron put you in business in this land of opportunity. The cattle-hunters sometimes were hardly a jump ahead of the sheriff. They came from the brawling railroad terminal towns, from the used-up buffalo hunting grounds, from Kansas and Missouri and Nebraska, from Kentucky and Virginia, from New York and from England and France. And from Mexico and the border, came Indians and Mexicans, smugglers and stealers of cattle and horses, fighting the men from the north for possession of the unmastered herds.
Everywhere there was utter contempt for the “occupation” government, the so-called caretaker or transition government imposed by the Federals in their victory. Members of the state police, white and Negro—the law-enforcement arm of that regime—were regarded as fair game the year round. And when things got too hot, the outlaw, or the good citizen in trouble from resisting carpetbaggers, could always get a job escorting a herd up the trail to the Kansas country. The herd bosses wanted men who could ride hard, stand the tough grind of the drive, shoot fast and straight at Indians and desperadoes who might want to steal or stampede their herds. They didn’t care how many men the applicant had killed. In fact, the notched gun sometimes was a very special certificate of recommendation for a job of that kind.
And nowhere in Texas, nor anywhere in the West, were there riders like those who earned their spurs hunting the untamed cattle of the south Texas brush country. No jungle land in Africa or South America could be less penetrable than were the virgin thickets of mesquite and cactus and chaparral. These were the adopted homeland of the longhorns, who had gone wild for years when there was no outlet for beef. The hooked spines of the cat-claw, the thorn-bushes known as huajillo, and amargosa, the junco, the devil’s pincushion, all forced the cowboy into stout leather chaps as an essential part of his garb.
Through all these barriers, and the sprawling, intertwining mesquite and agarita and needle-pointed Spanish Dagger, the cattle hunter had to hack his path with, machete and axe. To take his horse through these thickets, the cowpoke could not sit tall in the saddle in the stiff-backed styles of the riding academies. He had to weave and wind through these networks of branches, and everywhere were the wild growths of prickly-pear cactus, not knee or waist-high as they were most commonly known, but high over the head of a mounted man. To get through, the rider had to swing over to one si
de or the other of the horse. He had to keep his head low, press close against the animal’s ribs, and at times ride practically underneath the mount. He needed long heels on his boots to hook solidly, deep into the iron ring of the stirrup, and a double-cinched saddle that would hold without slipping under his twisting and bending and turning.
Ben Thompson had lived in the saddle for years, and could ride like these men. However, he had no predilection for their type of life. Still, he felt a strong bond with them, counted friends among them, understood them. This empathy of Ben Thompson in relation to the waddy may help explain some of the events in which he was involved later on, in his round of the towns along the Chisholm Trail, where he ran into Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and many another niche-holder in western gun lore.
Of all the Badlands of Texas none was worse than the area around San Antonio, north to the Brazos, east to the Gulf, and south and west to the Rio Grande. And of all this entire area, few sections could match the county for which San Antonio was the seat: Bexar, better known as The Free State of Bexar. That was before the Texas Rangers rode onto the scene in the seventies, hurling hellfire and the fear of God from their six-shooters. There must have been forty or fifty armed bands of outlaws operating unmolested in Bexar County alone, each outfit numbering anywhere from six to fifty men. Other counties were close runners-up in the statistics of outlawry. But whether they operated from far or near, they all converged on San Antonio to let their easy-come cash take the easy-go route: drinking, gambling, and whoring and, if need be, fighting, although they preferred to limit the last-named to their vocation rather than to make a busman’s holiday of their moments of recreation.
So unresisting was San Antonio to the charms of the bad-men in those days that it became a sanctuary for fugitives from distant areas, even beyond the remote borders of the enormous state. After waylaying a stagecoach or holding up a bank or express office, or robbing a train, the well-heeled desperadoes hightailed it to “Santoan.” Here they would hole up and live the life of Mr. Average Citizen of Means. They discarded their dusty, grimy trail clothes, got sheared, shaved, shampooed, showered, and shined; bought fancy outfits of city clothes, and played the part of gentlemen in the saloons and gambling halls and the variety theaters.
In the bright spots of San Antonio’s sporting world, Ben Thompson met many of the notorious bad-men of his day, either on this trip or later. He may have sat in with them in a faro game, or for an evening of draw poker, perhaps with the James boys, or with John Wesley Hardin, the teen-age desperado. Or he may have whiled away the better part of an hour at the bar, drinking with one of the Youngers or Yeagers, discussing the finer points of filed-down triggers, or business conditions in general up North. They all wound up for a brief stand in San Antonio, this year, or the next, or the next beyond that: the Daltons and the Suttons, Sam Bass, Jo Collins, Matt Woodlief, Bill Longley, the Clements brothers, Clay Allison, Doc Holliday… The list was long, and their lives fleeting.
And to San Antonio also came, eventually, John King Fisher, whose life was to become intimately involved with that of Ben Thompson’s.
King Fisher was a mere slip of a lad, but tall for his age when he first saw San Antonio. He was an orphan, thirteen or fourteen years old. He was sixteen when he killed his first man. And in the course of establishing a gun-fighting, cattle-rustling, and finally a law-enforcing reputation, Fisher became an admirer and friend of Ben Thompson.
CHAPTER 22
John Gootsby was one of thousands of horse-riding, pistol-toting men who camped in the brush country around San Antonio, engaged in diverse occupations—cattle-hunting one day, perhaps smuggling the next. They were men who may have changed their names with each shift of locale. Nobody seemed to know where Gootsby came from, but a goodly crowd was at the Green Front Saloon to witness his final departure, in a brief moment of action that assured him a place in the annals of the West.
Deep in his cups, Gootsby was feeling his oats that day. At the far end of the bar, reserved for clients with skins of darker hue, stood Charles Longbraid, a Negro-Cherokee cowboy, talking with some friends. Gootsby came to the unilateral decision that Charles should also be drinking. Despite the protests of the unwilling victim, Gootsby filled a big earthenware beer mug with whisky, set it on the bar, and insisted that the man drink it. Gootsby’s hand was on his pistol holster to back up his order.
A pistol shot interrupted the proceedings. The mug exploded, under the impact of a .45 bullet, in a shower of clay fragments and amber spray. Everybody at the bar ducked for cover, and those near enough to the door slipped out to the street. Only Gootsby remained cursing the ancestors of the dog who had brought down the curtain so sharply on his little playlet.
Gootsby had turned from the bar, and now he saw Ben Thompson walking slowly toward him. Gootsby’s unsteady hand went down to his holster again. Ben let him draw, and waited for the man to raise his pistol, then Ben squeezed the trigger of his own revolver. Three shots shattered the tense quiet of the saloon, two from Ben’s pistol, one from Gootsby’s. The stranger had ended his last binge. One bullet from Ben’s six-shooter had gouged deep into Gootsby’s stomach. As he slumped, the second bullet smashed his cheekbone, just under his left eye. He lurched, arms outstretched, and crashed dead to the floor. The slug from Gootsby’s pistol ranged high at an angle and ripped plaster and adobe off the far wall, near the ceiling.
Men who did not know Ben Thompson well could never figure out why he bothered to get mixed up in incidents like this. But those who had spent some time with him, who had talked with him, could tell of that peculiar streak in his make-up. They said Ben would go out of his way to stand up for the underdog, especially in a gunfight. He was a stickler for the even break, the fair chance. He went counter to his friends on rare occasions, when they had someone at a disadvantage. Something in him rebelled when he felt an individual was being pushed around: an unarmed man at the mercy of one with a weapon, or an armed man held at bay by more than one adversary.
Ben Thompson spun the cylinder, reloaded his .45, and slipped it into his holster. He walked out toward Military Plaza. Swinging into the big square, he was again aware of the overwhelming stench that rose from the open space. For if ever a town reflected the utter lawlessness of that epoch, it was the San Antonio Ben knew between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Big Sheep Boom.
Even the surface appearance of the town told of the breakdown of law and order: the sights, sounds, and smells were those of neglect and irresponsibility. A heavy rain had fallen several days before, and now the stagnant water in scores of muddy pools caught glints of the evening sun in thick shiny green scum. Weeds grew knee high. Rats scurried about fearlessly amid the piles of refuse, including stiff carcasses of long-dead dogs and cats. Great clouds of black flies drifted about in busy swarms, darting now and then into a nearby livery stable and then out again to the rotting scraps of meat left by the butcher at his open-air stand.
The near-collapse of the town was not all political or moral. It had suffered several devastating physical blows in the past five years, starting with the big flood of March 27, 1865. Normally the San Antonio River in those days flowed with a lively, bouncing current and carried plenty of water. During the night of the flood, the river had risen suddenly and by daybreak had spilled from its banks and spread for miles around, destroying buildings, stock and crops, and drowning families in the lowlands.
A year later, cholera struck and took its toll, as it was doing all along the Gulf Coast, and along the cattle trails. To complete the picture of disaster, when the town was shaking itself free of the earlier calamities, the big hail storm struck in 1868. Despite all this, the town kept growing. For one thing, there had been a steady influx of money from cattle sold up the trails. This was not squandering money, but investment that was reflected in new buildings. The military garrisons provided payrolls, and the rustlers and desperadoes came to town r
egularly with big bankrolls.
Besides, San Antonio was still the crossroads of long-distance freight hauling. West on Commerce Street, the road led to Uvalde, to Eagle Pass, to Laredo and El Paso, and the Mexican trade. East on Commerce Street, the ox-carts and wagon-trains, and herd after herd of cattle headed for Indianola, a busy port on Matagorda Bay, where the sailing vessels and side-wheel steamers loaded and unloaded cargo and human freight.
Ben Thompson took note, as had others by this time, of warning signs that the brush country cattle boom days were coming to an end. The drives to the North, and the rustlers and smugglers, had left great open spaces where thousands upon thousands of longhorn cattle fed before. Drought had added its toll, leaving ranges sere and barren.
The sheep-raising industry was just getting started. Merinos and other high-grade sheep were being brought down the Mississippi by boat, then across the Gulf to Galveston. From there, they went in droves to south Texas, to the Eagle Pass country, to the green hills of San Felipe del Rio, to feed and multiply, to populate vast sheep ranches, like that of Henry Shane on the Sabinal River.
But the big sheep boom was still several years away. Ben Thompson had no deep urge to stay on in San Antonio. Fast cash was following the cattle up the trails, but Ben was again in a settle-down mood. He was impatient to get established. When Phil Coe told him he was opening a big saloon in Austin and invited Ben to handle the gambling concession, the opportunity looked too good to turn down. By now, too, Ben’s reputation as a dealer rivaled his fame as a gunfighter. His name was known to all who played monte or poker or faro.