The Saga of Henry Starr

by Robert J Conley

Church turned out to be a camp meeting under a brush arbor. Henry looked around at the dry, barren prairie and wondered where they had gotten the brush. There was a fair-sized gathering of homesteaders there. Henry found himself seated in the midst of a sweating crowd in a revival mood. An old soldier in the remnants of a Union Army uniform had been testifying for several minutes.

  “And I’ll just close my testimony with this here thought for all of you,” he said.

  Henry was relieved to hear that the testimony was about to close.

  “Every last mother’s son and daughter of us has sinned.”

  The congregation roared “amens.”

  “And fell short of the glory of God.”

  More “amens” came from the crowd, and Henry felt conspicuous.

  “Amen,” he said.

  “But by the grace of God, we’ll rise to that glory once again come Judgment.”

  As the old soldier sat down, he was patted on the back by all who could reach him, while more “amens” were shouted. There was applause, and a couple of nonconformists roared out, “Hallelujah!” The black-bearded missionary, Henry’s host, got back up before the congregation.

  “I want to thank our brother,” he droned, “for that fine testimonial, and now I’d like to ask the stranger in our midst if he wants to share a few words with us tonight.”

  There were shouts of approval, and Henry felt hands on him from all sides, pushing and urging him to give an affirmative answer to the missionary’s question. Henry somehow felt that it would be unsafe to refuse. There is little in life more dangerous than righteous wrath aroused. He rose to his feet.

  “Well, my friends,” he said, “I will tell you what. The sentiments of the brother preceding are my sentiments exactly. I hope that the associations of the evening remain in happy retrospect, and I believe that you ministers, here, are doing a great work in this community.”

  As the meeting was breaking up, and people were shaking Henry’s hand and congratulating him on a fine speech, he was thinking to himself that it had been, indeed, a fine speech. He had not lied at all, for, to begin with, he agreed with the old soldier that nobody is perfect. Second, when he had hoped that the evening’s associations would remain happy, he had been looking at the prettiest girl in the crowd, and, finally, he had praised the work of the preachers in the community, because, if they were to keep up their good work, he figured, they would soon rid their community of pesky prairie dogs.

  He managed to survive all of the preaching and to get a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast from his host. In the morning he resumed his journey, which was generally west. By evening he had gotten into the mountain country of Colorado, and he was riding down a narrow mountain pass. As he rounded a curve in the pass, he suddenly brought his horse to a halt. There before him were two mounted men with rifles. He looked over his shoulder, and two more appeared behind him. There were four rifles leveled at him. He slowly raised his hands above his head and shrugged.

  “I should have listened to the Kid,” he said.

  “What?” said one of the horsemen.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Henry, then with a little disgust in his voice, added, “Colorado.”

  30

  He was caught fair, and Henry accepted his fate with calm resignation. He was sentenced to serve from seven to twenty-five years in the Colorado State Penitentiary at Canyon City, and he began his sentence with a steadfast determination. As before, he was a model prisoner. He did what he was told to do without hesitation. He was a favorite of guards and prisoners alike. He spent some time at hard labor, working on a road gang, but soon he was made boss of the gang. When he was able, as before, he spent time in the prison library. While Henry was serving the first year of his sentence, William Howard Taft became the twenty-seventh President of the United States. At Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the famous and once feared Geronimo died, and Red Cloud, who had once forced the United States Army to abandon a fort along the Bozeman Trail, died in South Dakota. Butch Cassidy and Harry Longbaugh, known as the Sundance Kid, were rumored to have been killed by law officers in Bolivia.

  As Henry spent more time in the prison, he found that his privileges increased. He had more time to spend in the library, and he read books on law and on criminology. He read newspapers as well, and he read of the death of Mark Twain in 1910 and of the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, where a Sac and Fox Indian from Oklahoma named Jim Thorpe won both the decathlon and pentathlon championships. Yes, Henry thought, the world was rapidly changing around him. He vaguely wondered how many years he would spend shut away from the world this time, and how strange he would find it upon his release.

  But the prison was being too kind to Henry, and he had more time on his hands than he knew what to do with. He decided to write a book in which he would tell his life story. After all these years Henry still felt he had been forced into a life of crime, and he felt an urge at this stage in his life to leave a record of his side of the story. He sat in the prison library with a stack of paper and a pencil. He had been required to obtain permission from the warden for this undertaking, but that had not been difficult.

  He stared for a few moments at the blank paper there before him, scratched his head, and then began to write.

  I was born near Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, on December 2, 1873, and am of Scotch-Irish-Indian ancestry. My father, George Starr, was a half-blood Cherokee Indian; my mother, Mary Scott, is one-quarter Cherokee. There were three children by their union—Elizabeth, the eldest, Addie, the second, and myself, Henry George Starr, the youngest. I might mention that I was born in a cabin, the inevitable log cabin, close to Fort Gibson, one of the oldest forts in the west. It was here Sam Houston came when he fled from his beautiful wife and the governorship of Tennessee, and later married the fair Indian maiden, Talihina. Sam Houston was also famous for his ability to put much fire-water under his belt, and his accomplishments along that line were the envy of every Indian and soldier in that region.

  Washington Irving also visited Fort Gibson, and it was while ruminating along the banks of the beautiful Grand River, that he wrote “The Bee Hunt” and other stories.

  The book occupied all of Henry’s spare time until it was concluded, and it wasn’t long after he had finished that he was called in to see the warden, it was hoped for the last time. He had received his parole, and he had been issued a civilian suit. It was 1913, and Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States. Cecil B. DeMille had produced The Squaw Man, and the United States Congress had passed the 16th amendment in order to allow an income tax. Henry had read about all these things, but, standing before the warden, he wondered what the world was like out there. The warden looked up at Henry from behind a cluttered desk. His expression was friendly but serious.

  “Henry,” he said, “do you understand the terms of this parole?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Henry, “I think so.”

  “You know,” continued the warden, “the last time you were released from prison, you had been pardoned. You were free. This is different. You’re not free. Not quite. You’re on parole.”

  “Yes, sir. I realize that.”

  “You’re going to have to find gainful employment here in Colorado, at least until you’ve served this out.”

  Henry did as he was told. At forty years of age, he found a job in a hash house in Pueblo.

  31

  The job at the hash house was all right for a while. For a while it was new, and when the newness had worn off, Henry was able to endure it longer by calling up from within himself feelings of self-righteousness. He was keeping to the straight and narrow. He was earning, not much money, but he was earning it. He was making honest wages for honest work. He was, he told himself, a reformed man. He had written to Olive to let her know where he could be found and what the terms of his parole were. Did she want to come to Pueblo and bring little Theodore Roosevelt? The money wasn’t much, but they could get along on it. She had answered that she wasn’t at all anxious t
o remove herself and her child to a strange place far away from home. She hoped that he was doing well and that his life would be better in the future. The letter, Henry thought, was just a bit cold. Well, he couldn’t really blame her. He certainly hadn’t done right by her in the past, and he didn’t really have anything to offer at present. He thought that it would have been nice to be able to live a quiet and normal life with his wife and child. He wondered what Theodore Roosevelt looked like. He must be getting to be a big boy. Henry reminded himself that the life of a normal workingman, a husband and a father, just wasn’t in the cards for him. He felt a pang of guilt for having brought Olive into his life, for having allowed himself to believe that it would work, for having convinced her that it would.

  There was a waitress in the hash house, Laura, who had displayed an interest in Henry almost from the time he had gone to work there. She was white, blond, in her mid-thirties. She was a reasonably attractive woman, though she showed the signs of a rough life in her features. Henry walked her home after work late one evening. He stayed all night with her, and he thought about Olive and his son back in Tulsa, and for the first time in nearly twenty-three years he felt really guilty.

  But Olive’s letter had been cold. In spite of the guilt, the nights with Laura became more and more frequent. They became regular, and as Henry grew more comfortable with Laura, he also grew less patient with the hash house and more restless. He was not a man who had been cut out for a regular life, he reminded himself. The episodes in his youth with the federal lawmen, the word about the planned Arkansas extradition from the new state of Oklahoma following his pardon (which, by the way, had been proved later to be a mistake, as the governor of Oklahoma had refused the request of Arkansas), all of these had demonstrated clearly to him over the years that he was a man marked at birth for life as a criminal and a fugitive. He was only fooling himself in Pueblo at the hash house, he thought. It couldn’t last because it simply was not meant to be. Yet a part of him wanted to keep trying. He thought of his family in Tulsa and of the rewards of the simple, ordinary home life. Something deep within him longed for that life.

  Then he received another letter from Tulsa.

  He was sitting quietly with Laura in her small apartment after work one evening. The room was, like Henry’s own, rather shabbily furnished and badly in need of repair. He was thinking how drab was his existence in Pueblo, moving back and forth from the hash house to the dingy apartments. His meager wages didn’t allow for much else. He and Laura had made love—no, he thought, they had not made love. They had engaged in an urgent biological activity together. It had been satisfying, but it was a satisfaction that all animals could attain. However, they each accepted it for what it was, and they were, therefore, comfortable with one another.

  There was a knock at the door, and Laura got up to answer it. She stood in the doorway, opening the door only partially.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “What do you want?”

  Henry could not see the man in the hallway, but he could hear the voice.

  “I want to talk to you,” it said.

  “We’ve got nothing to talk about,” said Laura. “Just leave me alone.”

  “Let me come in,” said the man.

  “No.”

  “Just for a minute.”

  “The last time I let you in just for a minute, we wound up in a hell of a fight, and you blacked my eye,” said Laura. “Just go away and leave me alone.”

  “Laura,” said the man, and he pushed on the door.

  Henry stood up from his place on the couch, and his eyes caught the eyes of the man in the hall for an instant. Then the other stepped back and disappeared from Henry’s view once more.

  “I didn’t know you had company,” said the voice.

  “You didn’t need to know,” said Laura. “Now go away and don’t come back.”

  She slammed the door, turned around and leaned against it with an exasperated sigh.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said.

  “Who is he?” asked Henry.

  “My ex-husband. He keeps bothering me. Says he wants me back. Let’s not talk about him, okay?”

  Henry sat back down. The existence of the ex-husband didn’t worry him. If need be, he could take care of the man. But the fact that Laura had something even more to escape than the general dreariness of life in Pueblo helped Henry to make a quick decision on a matter he had been contemplating since he had read his latest mail.

  “I’m going back to Oklahoma, Laura,” he said. “I want you to go with me.”

  “What?” she said, moving back to the couch to sit beside him.

  “You heard me.”

  “Wait a minute, baby,” said Laura. “There’s a couple of problems with that idea.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” said Henry.

  “If you leave the state, you violate your parole. They’ll send you back to prison.”

  Henry stood up and paced across the room.

  “If I can’t move when I feel like it,” he said, “I might as well be in prison anyway. I’m going. I’ll change my name, and I’ll live in Tulsa. It’s getting big enough that I can hide there.”

  “All right,” said Laura. “Then the other thing. You want me to go with you?”

  “That’s right,” said Henry. “That’s what I said.”

  “What about your wife in Tulsa?”

  Henry clenched his jaws slightly, then relaxed. He reached into a pocket of his jacket, which was hanging on the back of a chair, and withdrew a folded-up piece of paper. He handed the paper to Laura, who opened it up to read.

  “This is a letter from your wife?” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She’s gotten a divorce.”

  Laura refolded the letter and handed it back to Henry.

  “So I’m a free man,” he said with a grin, “uh, so to speak.”

  32

  It was good to be back in Oklahoma, changed though it was. Henry had come to expect change—radical change—every time he returned home. Change comes gradually to those who remain at home, and, more often than not, they take it in stride—don’t even notice it creeping up on them. Henry, having spent long periods of time away from home, always saw the changes when he returned, and each time he returned to that place he called home and found it again strange to him, he felt more isolated—estranged from not only society but also the landscape. He was the stranger. No matter where he might go, he would always be a stranger. He had accepted that role as a permanent fixture of his life on this planet, as a part of the hand he had been dealt by a cold and impersonal fate.

  He went back to Tulsa, a fugitive from the state of Colorado, bringing the white woman, Laura, with him. They went into Tulsa as man and wife, using the names of Mr. and Mrs. R. L. Williamson. Henry enjoyed taking Laura to a Tulsa realtor and being shown houses. He particularly enjoyed the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Williamson finally settled for a modest home two doors down from the home of the sheriff of Tulsa County. It was 1914, and Henry Starr was forty-one years old. He found a publisher, R. D. Gordon, in Tulsa, who was willing to bring out his book. Gordon was unaware of Henry’s life as R. L. Williamson and had no address for Henry. The book was published that same year under the title, Thrilling Events: Life of Henry Starr, Written in the Colorado Penitentiary by Himself. It sold for fifty cents, and it sold fairly well. It was 1914, the year of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the beginning of World War I. It was the year that William S. Hart starred in his first Western film, The Bargain. And it was the year that, beginning on September 8, in Keystone, Oklahoma, and ending on December 29, in Carney, Kansas, nine banks were robbed, and Henry Starr was said to have robbed them all. He had no job, either as Henry Starr or as R. L. Williamson, and his earnings from Thrilling Events were scant.

  It was also an election year in Oklahoma. The governor was named R. L. Williams. Reading the paper in his modest little house, Henry Starr chuckled at the nearness of his assumed
name to that of the governor. Then he came across another interesting bit of news.

  “Ha,” he said. “Laura. Listen to this. Al Jennings, the old train robber, is a candidate for the office of governor.”

  “A train robber,” said Laura, “running for governor? Is he crazy?”

  “No,” said Henry, “actually I think he should win the office. He’s a better man than the average politician, for he has at least been open and honest about his stealing.”

  “Well,” said Laura.

  “And furthermore,” continued Henry, “he has already served his time in prison for his previous crimes, which is more than any of the others can say.”

  Henry’s sense of humor often eluded Laura, and this was one of those times. She shrugged and went on about her business, while Henry continued reading the paper.

  “It says here,” said Henry, “that the leading candidate is by far the incumbent, Governor R. L. Williams.”

  “Huh,” said Laura, who had never before noticed the name, “that sounds almost like you—R. L. Williamson.”

  “Yes.”

  Henry had lowered the paper. He was deep in thought.

  “I wonder what would happen if I, Mr. R. L. Williamson, should file for office. I wonder how many voters might become confused and cast for me by mistake.”

  The following morning Henry kissed Laura good-bye, went downtown, and filed for office under his assumed name. He went from there to the train station and caught a train for Webster Groves, Missouri. There he robbed the bank and caught the next train back to Tulsa.

  The year 1915 began with the incumbent having been elected for another term as governor of the state. Henry’s game had, indeed, drawn some votes away from the governor, but not enough to cost him the election. The year also began with a new string of bank robberies, all attributed to Henry Starr. In January alone, the banks were robbed in Preston, Owasso, Terlton, Garber, and Vera. Governor Williams authorized a thousand-dollar reward for the capture of Henry Starr—dead or alive. Henry wrote a letter to the governor.