The Saga of Henry Starr

by Robert J Conley

  Quickly the two walked the short distance to the depot. Henry burst through the door, his six-gun held ready. Milo was right behind him. The agent sat bolt upright and held up his hands. Henry gestured toward the money in the safe, and the agent handed it over. Then the two robbers raced back to their horses and mounted up. Not a word had been said. Still Henry led the way. They raced out of the town the same way they had come in, but on the way out, Henry fired a few shots into the air. When they were outside of town, according to an earlier agreement, they rode off in different directions. They would see each other the next day.

  Henry rode out onto the prairie. He would go back to the Todd Ranch, put up the horse and saddle, neither of which was his own, slip into the bunkhouse, and go to bed. In the morning he would get up and start the day as on any other day. Milo was to do basically the same thing, but they had separated so as not to be seen coming back at the same time and together. The way Milo was riding would take him a little longer to get back, but Henry decided to make the interim as long as possible. He spurred up his horse to hurry on back.

  Suddenly the horse screamed out in the darkness and bucked, throwing Henry to the ground. Henry’s breath was knocked out of him, and he lay senseless for a moment. When he recovered enough to sit up and look around him, he could just see the horse disappearing in the darkness. It was too far to walk back. Besides, he couldn’t very well return to the ranch without the horse and saddle. He started to stand up, thinking that he would try to follow the horse, but as he did so, he reached out with one hand and felt a wire. He groped along the wire until something pricked his hand.

  “Bob wire,” he said out loud.

  So that was what had happened. The poor animal had run up on the barbed wire. Henry continued to feel along the wire until his hand felt a thick, warm, and sticky substance.

  “Blood.”

  He knew that he couldn’t find the wounded and probably crazed animal in the dark. There was no telling what it had done, which direction it had gone in its pain and fear. Henry lay down in the dirt to await daylight. He slept but little, and as soon as the sun began to let a little light onto the prairie, he was on his feet. There was a good deal of blood on the wire and on the ground beneath it. The horse had been cut badly. Henry looked around and saw a trail of blood on the ground. It was easy to follow, and he figured that the horse couldn’t possibly go far as badly as he must have been cut.

  He began walking, following the gory trail. He hadn’t gone far when, topping a slight rise, he spotted a barn ahead. The bleeding horse had headed straight for it. Henry made his way cautiously to the barn. The door was open, and he edged up to it. He heard voices coming from inside the barn. Peering around the corner of the open doorway, he saw two men standing beside the hurt horse.

  “I don’t know whose horse it is,” one man was saying, “but the saddle belongs to Charles Todd. I recognize it. Hell, I used it when I worked for him last year.”

  “Well,” said the other, “I’ll take this into town. If Todd knows who had this saddle, then they’ll know who robbed the depot. You just as well shoot that horse. He’s too far gone.”

  Henry got away from the barn quickly. How, he wondered, had they put it all together so easily? Then he remembered that the stolen money was in the saddlebags. They could easily have heard about the robbery. They weren’t far from town. Because he couldn’t think of anything else to do, Henry walked back to the Todd Ranch. It was late in the day by the time he arrived, and there were two deputy United States marshals waiting for him. He shrugged. It was the pattern of his life. It was natural, and this time it was even just and proper. Henry somehow felt good about that. As the deputies approached him, he could see Milo standing off to one side looking nervous and guilty. Henry ignored Milo and hoped that the slow-witted cowboy would have the good sense to just keep quiet. The prospect of jail no longer worried Henry. Jail was easy to get out of. He had done it before—twice.

  10

  With the charge of armed robbery against him, Henry found himself back in the Fort Smith jail, and this time he went to court. Charlie Starr appeared once more to help his nephew out of trouble, but Henry was getting to be more and more expensive for Charlie. He could see that his uncle was losing his patience. When asked for his plea, Henry answered, “Guilty,” and a trial date was set along with a two-hundred-dollar bond. Uncle Charlie paid the two hundred. Henry assured his uncle that he would appear for the trial so that the bond would not be forfeited. He felt really guilty for the first time since his scrapes with the law had begun, not because he was in fact guilty of the robbery, but because he knew, even as he gave his assurances to his uncle, that he was lying. He had no intention of showing up for the sentencing.

  When Henry got back in the vicinity of Nowata and the Todd Ranch, he looked up Milo on the cowboy’s day off. Milo had not been suspected. It had been known that two men had committed the robbery, but Milo had gotten his horse back in the corral and had managed to slip back into the bunkhouse undetected. Since the stolen money had been discovered in the saddlebags on the cut horse, no one seemed to be too much concerned about the identity of the other robber, and Henry had been mum on that subject.

  The two cowboys arranged to meet at a line shack on the Todd Ranch. They knew that the shack was not being used at the time, so it seemed to be a safe choice. Even though Milo was not suspected of involvement in the robbery, Henry thought it prudent for Milo not to be seen with him just yet.

  Inside the shack, Milo rolled a cigarette and offered the makings to Henry.

  “No thanks, Milo,” said Henry. “I never use tobacco.”

  “You know what folks are saying around Nowata, Henry?” said Milo as he licked his paper and gave Henry a sly look.

  “What’s that?” said Henry. It was a polite response. He wasn’t really interested in what the good citizens of Nowata thought or felt.

  “They’re saying you won’t show up for the trial.”

  Henry looked at Milo and smiled.

  “They’re right,” he said, and he felt a pang of guilt concerning his uncle.

  Milo’s face registered surprise.

  “You ain’t?”

  “No,” said Henry. “I’d be a fool to show up for sentencing. I’m guilty, and I’ve already admitted to it. My role in life is cut out for me now, Milo. No more fooling around. I’m an outlaw. Anybody who doesn’t know it yet will know it pretty soon.”

  Milo struck a match on the wall of the line shack and held the flame up to his damp and twisted cigarette. He sucked in the smoke.

  “Henry,” he said, “you know that old farmer—I can’t ’call his name—just south of town?”

  “Old white-haired fat man?” said Henry.

  “Yeah. That’s the one. He was in the barbershop while back allowing that you just might be guilty because, he says, all Indians is just natural-born thieves. I was sitting there waiting my turn. I heard him say it. ‘All Indians is just natural-born thieves,’ he said. I heard him.”

  Milo emptied his lungs of smoke with a long sigh and looked at Henry for the effect of this information.

  “Well,” said Henry, after only a brief pause, “let’s help him maintain his position.”

  “How we going to do that?”

  “Milo,” said Henry, “you own your own horse and saddle?”

  “You know I don’t. I have to ride Mr. Todd’s horses.”

  “Well, I seem to recall a couple of pretty nice-looking saddle broncs at that old man’s farm.”

  The early hours of the next day found Henry and Milo riding across the prairie on two newly acquired mounts with fairly decent saddles. By daylight they had reached the small town of Lenapah. Stores were just beginning to open. Henry led the way to a general store on the main street. Milo followed obediently. The store had just opened for the day. There were few people on the street and no customers in the store. The owner was alone, and he had the cash register opened as Henry stepped in through the front doo
r with Milo close on his heels. The storekeeper looked up, expecting to greet an early customer, and he saw the pistol in Henry Starr’s hand.

  “Just hand me all that stuff you’re counting there, and we’ll be on our way,” said Henry.

  The storekeeper didn’t say a word. He took all the money from his cash drawer and laid it on the counter. Henry gestured to Milo, who quickly scraped it all up and stuffed it into his pockets. The two outlaws started to go back outside, but Henry hesitated.

  “Wait up,” he said.

  He moved over to a glass case that contained some pistols.

  “Come here, mister,” he said.

  The storekeeper obeyed.

  “Let me have those two .45s.”

  The man removed the revolvers from the case and laid them out on top for Henry.

  “I’ll need several boxes of shells,” said Henry.

  The storekeeper turned around and pulled the shells off a shelf against the wall. He put them down beside the .45s. Up on the same wall near the shelf with the shells some new rifles were displayed, and Henry gave them a quick look.

  “Put out two of those .38–.56 Winchesters,” he said, “and some shells for them.”

  Again the storekeeper did as he was told. He was nervous, but he was also efficient. He was a man who obviously had no intention of antagonizing a man with a gun.

  “How much does all that come to?” asked Henry.

  The poor storekeeper was so dumbfounded that he didn’t respond immediately, so Henry had to ask again.

  “Well, how much? We are in a little bit of a hurry. I think you can understand that.”

  The storekeeper did some hasty and nervous figuring.

  “Let’s see,” he said. “These is seventeen dollars each. That’s thirty-four. And the rifles is forty. Forty and forty is eighty. And then the shells.”

  “Sounds to me,” said Henry, “that it’s going to round off at about a hundred and fifty. That sound right to you?”

  “Uh, yes. Yes, that’s pretty close.”

  Henry gave Milo a quick glance.

  “How much have we got?” he asked.

  Milo was as dumbfounded as the storekeeper, but he tucked his pistol into his waistband and reached into the pocket where he had just a minute earlier stuffed the stolen money. He pulled it out, dumped it back onto the counter and, with some little difficulty, counted it.

  “We got right at three hundred here,” he said.

  “Pay the man his hundred and fifty,” said Henry.

  Outside of town, riding cross-country once more, Henry called out to Milo.

  “Milo, remember Carter’s Country Store?”

  Milo was still feeling stupefied and was sulking just a bit because of it, but he answered Henry’s question.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I know the place.”

  “Well,” said Henry, “I think we better take a run over there and get some more cash. We spent too much back there in Lenapah.”

  “Well,” said the slow-witted Milo, “what the hell did we spend it for anyway?”

  “Milo,” said Henry, “stealing money is one thing. Buying guns is another.”

  11

  Henry and Milo had, indeed, gone on to Carter’s Country Store and robbed the till. They got one hundred and eighty dollars to add to the one fifty left over from the robbery in Lenapah. Milo was still puzzled about why Henry had bothered to pay for the guns and ammunition, and Henry decided that if Milo couldn’t understand his little joke, it wouldn’t do any good to try to explain it to him. He did decide, however, that having stolen two horses and robbed two stores, they should probably find someplace to lie low in for a while.

  Milo said that he knew a place, and he led Henry to the home of an acquaintance of his known as Frank Cheney. Cheney lived in a small shack on an out-of-the-way road. Henry wondered if Cheney was a renter or just a squatter, but he mentally shrugged it off. Whatever Cheney was, he was obviously not a working farmer, or if he was, he was a very poor one. The place had the look of total neglect. Cheney had broken out a bottle of whiskey, and he and Milo had begun to indulge right away. Henry did not drink (he hadn’t lied to the two lawmen who had arrested him for possessing whiskey), and he soon tired of the company of the two carousers. He told Milo and Cheney that he would see them later, cautioned Milo to stay at Cheney’s until he got back, then rode off alone.

  Henry had only one place to go. It would be just a matter of time before he was known to be the robber of the two stores, and the old farmer whose horses he had stolen had almost surely already accused him of that theft. In addition, he was known to have pled guilty at Fort Smith to the charge of holding up the depot at Nowata. He hadn’t been back to see Todd since his last arrest, and he had no intention of going back. He would not go back home as long as C. N. Walker was there. Henry had no one except Mae, and even if he had had someone else, it was Mae he was missing. He had an ache for her. He headed his horse in the direction of the Morrisons’ rented farm.

  Mr. Morrison was out in front of the house, busy splitting logs for the wood stove in the kitchen, and Mrs. Morrison had just stepped out on the front porch to shake out a towel, when Henry came riding into the yard.

  “Howdy, Mr. Morrison,” called Henry.

  Morrison didn’t miss a stroke with his ax, but he did manage a reply in between swings. He was not a bad man, thought Henry, for a white man. He wasn’t too friendly, but that was just because he was always working, and he didn’t seem to have much use for anything but work.

  “Climb down out of your saddle, son,” he said.

  Mrs. Morrison looked over her shoulder toward the front door of the house and hollered.

  “Mae,” she said, “come on out. You’ve got a caller.”

  While Henry climbed down off his horse, he thought to himself, Good. They haven’t heard anything yet.

  Mae came out to meet him.

  “Hello, Henry,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “You want to stay to dinner?”

  Then she looked toward her mother.

  “Is it all right, Mama?”

  “Sure,” said the mother, “you stay and eat with us, Henry.”

  Henry smiled.

  “All right,” he said. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  “We’re having crawdads,” said Mae. “That is, if I can catch any. I was just getting ready to go get them. Now that you’re staying to dinner, you can help me.”

  “That was a pretty clever trick,” said Henry. “All right. Let’s go get them.”

  “I’ll go get a bucket and a pole. Kill a chicken,” said Mae, and she ran off toward a lean-to shack off to the side of the house.

  Henry looked around at the chickens clucking and pecking about the house. He turned to Mae’s mother for advice.

  “Which one?” he asked.

  “Oh, it don’t much matter,” said Mrs. Morrison, looking around the yard. “That one on the fence is as good as any.”

  Henry followed her gaze to a scrawny hen on a fence post about twenty feet to his right. He pulled out his new .45, cocked and aimed it, and squeezed the trigger. There was a loud blast, and the hen’s head seemed to explode. The Morrisons’ old hound dog set up a howl, which lasted for only a minute. He hadn’t bothered to stand up while he was howling. Mae came back with a bucket, a cane pole with a line on it, and a small net. She dropped these items to the ground beside Henry and ran to retrieve the wretched hen, which she soon had plucked in record time. Then she tossed the remains into the bucket.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  Henry mounted up, then helped Mae to climb up behind him. She carried the bucket, pole and net, and they rode off toward the creek. When they reached a spot where the water ran clear over a bed of flat rocks, they dismounted. Henry allowed the reins of his mount to trail. They sat down by the creek, and Henry pulled apart the carcass of the unfortunate chicken, then tied a piece of the fresh meat to the line on the cane pole.

  “Y
ou want to wade or fish?” he asked Mae.

  “Give me the pole,” she said.

  Mae took the pole and went to the edge of the water. Reaching out, she lowered the piece of chicken down into the water and onto the flat rocks. Henry pulled off his boots and socks and rolled up the legs of his trousers. He picked up the small net and walked gingerly to the edge of the water to watch the crawdads come crawling out from under the rocks and onto the fresh meat. When the bait was in danger of being overcrowded and the prey was thoroughly absorbed in devouring the raw flesh, Henry went slowly and carefully into the water. He took the line in his right hand and began to ease the bait, still covered with the greedy crawdads, up off the rocks. At the same time, with his left hand, he lowered the net into the water and slipped it under the whole mess. In one scoop they had captured a dozen of the little creatures. In a few hours the bucket was nearly full.

  “How’s that look?” said Henry.

  “Any more and they’ll crawl out on top of each other.”

  They rode back to the house and spent the next while cleaning their catch. Henry was fascinated with the way in which Mae deftly snapped off the heads and cleaned out the small gut with one flick of her thumb. The job was done in time for Mae and Mrs. Morrison to get a great platter of fried crawdads prepared for the dinner table. It was an old Cherokee delicacy that the whites living among the Cherokees had learned about. Mr. Morrison was certainly enjoying the meal. Henry was amused at the way in which the tiny crawdad legs occasionally became tangled in the whiskers of Morrison’s moustache. Henry, too, enjoyed the meal and the company, but he felt a little uneasy—a bit anxious or nervous somehow.

  Later, outside, the sun low in the sky, Henry knew that he would soon have to take his leave of Mae. His belly was full, and he felt good, but his thoughts were on the future. He took Mae’s hand in his.

  “Mae,” he said, “I’ve got to tell you something. You’re going to hear about it sooner or later anyhow. I’m not working for Mr. Todd anymore.”