The Saga of Henry Starr

by Robert J Conley

  On March 15, 1919, Henry Starr, dressed in a new civilian suit, stood at the front gate of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. He handed a piece of paper to the gate guard.

  “Well, Henry,” said the guard, “you going home?”

  “I’m not exactly sure where that is anymore, Gerald,” said Henry.

  Gerald opened the gate for Henry to walk through, then shut it again and locked it. Henry stood on the outside of the gate looking ahead.

  “Hey,” said Gerald, through the gate, “how much time have you done?”

  “Altogether?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just over fifteen years,” said Henry.

  “You got early outs, too, didn’t you?”

  “For good behavior.”

  “What if you hadn’t?” said the guard. “I mean, how much time would it have been?”

  “I’ve been sentenced to a total of sixty-five years in prison—that’s not to mention the time I was sentenced to hang.”

  Gerald shook his head.

  “Hmm,” he murmured. “Well, I’ll be seeing you.”

  “No,” said Henry. “No, you won’t. So long.”

  36

  On the main street of Stroud, Oklahoma, a man stood with six horses at a hitch rail in front of a store. A few doors down from where he waited, Henry Starr and two other men opened the front door of a bank and walked in. Out in the middle of the street, just as the third man disappeared into the bank, two men pulled out their pistols and fired a few shots into the air. The shots had the desired effect. People on the street ran inside of doors—whatever doors were handy. The street was cleared. One of those who ran for cover was a sixteen-year-old boy. He ducked inside a butcher shop that stood between the bank and the storefront where the man waited with the horses. The two men in the middle of the street, holding their guns ready for action, kept turning to look from one end of the street to the other, watching nervously for any sign of interference with their plans. A door opened next door to the bank, and one of the men whirled to level his six-shooter at whoever might come out. Whoever it was saw him and immediately reconsidered. The door shut again quickly. Then Henry and the two men with him came back out of the bank, each with money sacks stuffed. They calmly walked into the street, heading for the second bank, just across from the first one. In the middle of the street, the two men stationed there turned and fell in step with the other three, and all five walked into the second bank.

  Across the street in the butcher shop, the young man watched, fascinated, through a dirty window in the front door. His heart pounded, and he felt his breath heavy in his chest. He saw the five men come out of the bank across the street from him. Each man carried a sack stuffed, apparently, with cash. The five men were walking across the street at an angle that would take them directly to the six horses and the sixth man who waited for them. The young man in the butcher shop realized that the bank robbers would have to walk right past the butcher shop—right past him.

  “No one’s doing anything,” he said.

  The robbers were almost in front of him.

  “They’re just walking away from the bank. No one’s making a move.”

  He looked around frantically inside the shop. There in a corner was an old rifle the butcher used for killing hogs. He ran to it and grabbed it up. He checked nervously to see if it was loaded. It was. He stepped back to the door. The outlaws had passed the butcher shop and were almost to their horses.

  Out in the street, Henry took up the rear in the move back to the horses. He felt, as always, something like a military commander with the responsibility for the safety of his command on his shoulders. He would be the last one to mount up and ride away. Moving at an easy pace, he spoke to his gang.

  “Well, boys,” he said, “we’ve accomplished a bank robber’s dream and outdone the Daltons all at once. Now let’s mount up and see if we can get out of here in one piece.”

  One of the men snorted over his shoulder.

  “Hell,” he said, “ain’t no one trying to stop us.”

  As the first two men reached their horses and were climbing into their saddles, the young man opened the front door of the butcher shop. Rifle in hand, he stepped out into the street. He put the hog-killing rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired. Henry Starr’s legs gave out under him, and he crumpled into the dirt. The other five hesitated, confused. Henry called out to them from where he lay in the street.

  “Go on, boys,” he said. “Get out of here.”

  The five outlaws put their spurs to their mounts and rode quickly out of Stroud, and Henry Starr lay looking into the tough faces of a crowd of armed and irate citizens that had suddenly materialized around him.

  “Cut. Cut.”

  The five riders had halted their mounts at the end of the street, and when they heard the shout, they turned and loped them back to the spot from which they had started. The young man laid aside the hog-gun and sat down on the edge of the sidewalk. A balding, middle-aged man in a beret, a flower-printed short-sleeved shirt, and knickers, holding a megaphone in his right hand, stepped out into the street. All eyes were turned in his direction.

  “That’s a take,” he said. “Henry, baby, that was fantastic.”

  Henry stood up and dusted off his clothes the best he could. The man with the megaphone continued talking.

  “All right, everyone,” he said, “let’s wrap it up for the day. Be back at the studio in the morning at eight o’clock sharp. Sharp, now.”

  He stepped over to another man who stood behind a massive camera on a tripod and slapped him on the shoulder. Henry walked past them to a white woman who waited there in a spot on the sidewalk out of the way. She was probably crowding forty, but she was carefully made up and fashionably dressed. She was an attractive woman—one who obviously knew just how attractive she was and was working hard to maintain that attractiveness in the wake of the ravages of age. He put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed her affectionately. She kissed him on the cheek.

  “You were wonderful, darling,” she said.

  “It was easy,” said Henry. “It didn’t hurt nearly as much as the first time.”

  37

  The woman’s name was Lillian. She had more or less come with the film deal; at least, she had dropped into Henry’s life at about that same time. Henry couldn’t even recall just when and where he had first seen her. It didn’t really matter, anyway. If she had not been there, another would have been. Lillian, Laura, Mae—what did it matter? But then there had been Olive—Olive and little Theodore Roosevelt Starr. Henry tried not to think of them. There were always people around him—men and women—and he was always alone.

  They dined together, Henry and Lillian, at a fine new restaurant in downtown Tulsa, and then they walked to the new movie theater. The streets were busy with automobiles, the air filled with the sounds of their engines and of honking horns and of the odor of exhaust fumes. In front of the theater stood a life-sized cardboard cutout of Henry Starr, wearing tall black boots, his trousers tucked into them. He had on a white Stetson, and around his neck was tied a large yellow bandanna. He held a six-gun in each hand and glared menacingly straight ahead. The real Henry Starr stepped up beside the copy and struck a similar pose. He wore a new western suit, boots, string tie, and white Stetson. Lillian laughed, a lilting, musical laugh, at his posture. Crowds of moviegoers pointed and whispered to each other. Behind the two figures of Henry Starr, on the front of the theater building was pasted a poster advertising the movie inside: “A Debtor to the Law, starring Henry Starr, the notorious bank robber, as himself.”

  Inside, Henry sat with the white woman in darkness in the midst of a crowd. He held her hand. Their eyes, like those of the rest of the crowd, stared straight ahead at flickering images on a large screen. The movements of the figures on the screen were strange, jerky, a little comical, but Henry was recognizable as one of the six men on horseback riding into town. The town, too, was recognizable to anyone who had been there. It
was Stroud, Oklahoma.

  It was strange for Henry, watching himself rob the two banks at Stroud. He saw the horses hitched to the rail in front of the store. He watched himself walking down the street and into the first bank. He saw the two men in the street, and he saw the boy go into the butcher shop. The reenactment was accurate, precise. Henry had insisted that it be so. The only thing unreal to Henry was that the faces of his cohorts were not those of Estes, Maxfield, Sawyer, Spencer, and Durrell. They were, instead, faces of actors. And, of course, there was no sound other than that of the rinky-tink piano off to the left of the screen. It was, to Henry, like a dream. It was surreal. It was as if he were there again, going through it all again, yet he wasn’t, and when the young actor playing the part of Paul Curry fired the shot that dropped Henry in the street, Henry flinched in his chair and a sharp pain shot through his hip.

  The movie ended, and the house lights were turned on, temporarily blinding everyone in the audience, and Henry and Lillian strolled out into the street. He was easily recognized. Some groups of people, as had those before the start of the movie, whispered and pointed. Others spoke to him and shook his hand. He signed some autographs, some on small picture postcards bearing his image. When he finally managed to break away from his fans, Henry walked his woman back to their hotel. On the way through the lobby, the desk clerk called out.

  “Mr. Starr.”

  Henry turned to face the man.

  “Yeah?”

  “I have a letter for you here, sir. Just delivered.”

  Henry walked over to the counter and got the letter. He studied the return address and the postmark on the envelope.

  “What is it?” said Lillian.

  “From those Hollywood people,” said Henry. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  They went to their room, and Henry tossed his hat onto a chair. He tore open the envelope and read the letter.

  “Well?” said Lillian.

  “This California company wants me to go out there and go to work for them staging bank robberies for their western movies.”

  “Oh,” said Lillian, “that sounds wonderful. You will go, won’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Henry. “I’m thinking about it. I’ve made three movies for this other outfit, and I’m broke. I don’t even have the cash to pay our way out of this room.”

  “But this will pay well,” said Lillian. “Real well.”

  “It’s a sad comment on society,” said Henry, “that when a bank robber tries to reform, the people he works for will rob him blind. These movie people are worse crooks than I ever was. Still, the only other trade I have that pays well is bank robbing. We’ll need some cash to make the move.”

  38

  The big touring car sped down the narrow and winding Arkansas blacktop road leading into the bustling town of Harrison. Two men in business suits rode in the front, Henry Starr sat in the back alone. Tires squealed as the automobile took a sharp curve too quickly and started on the downhill grade with the outskirts of Harrison at its base. From the back seat Henry punched the driver in the shoulder and called out to him in a loud voice calculated to compensate for the roar of the wind and of the engine and of the loud whine of the tires on the blacktop.

  “Slow this thing down,” he said. “We don’t want to call attention to ourselves on the way in.”

  The driver did slow down, and the car rolled into Harrison drawing only incidental attention. He pulled up and parked in front of the bank on the main street and set the hand brake. The three men got out and walked to the front door of the bank. At a nod from Henry, the other two men reached under their suit coats and pulled out handguns. One of them opened the door and stepped aside, as Henry vaulted into the bank lobby, a pistol in each hand.

  “Hands up and hands steady,” he called out.

  His two companions were inside just after him, both holding their pistols out in front of them. There were few customers in the bank, and none of them panicked. They stepped back and put their hands up as they had been ordered to do. One of Henry’s companions held his pistol on the customers. The other moved quickly to behind the counter and began gathering cash up from the several cashiers’ drawers. Henry walked up to the window where a man stood with his hands up. The name plate in front of him said, “William J. Myers.” The big bank vault was behind Myers. Myers eyed Henry’s revolver nervously.

  “Mr. Myers,” said Henry, “open that vault.”

  Myers turned slowly and deliberately and stepped to the vault. The vault was not locked, for all he did was turn the handle and pull open the heavy door. It was a large walk-in vault, and Henry’s intention was to go inside and clean it out. He put a hand on Myers’ back and gave him a persuasive shove.

  “Inside,” he said.

  Myers went into the vault, and Henry looked over his shoulder to check on his two cohorts before following Myers into the vault himself. In that instant Myers, inside the vault, reached into a corner and picked up a double-barreled shotgun that had been stashed there for just such an emergency. Henry turned to walk into the vault and looked into the two big barrels. He didn’t have time to react. Myers pulled the triggers, and the roar filled the bank. The tremendous impact of the shot at such close range blew Henry back against the counter.

  It was 1921. Henry Starr was forty-seven years old, and he was dying in Harrison, Arkansas, following an attempt to rob the bank there. His two unknown companions had escaped with the money they had taken from the cashiers’ drawers. They did not get the money out of the vault, for when Henry had been shot, they had immediately fled the scene. Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States. The League of Nations had been established, and the United States Congress had passed the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, granting women the right to vote. Tom Mix starred in eight Western movies that year, and, that year, Gooper Johnson would perform the service for which he had been paid several years previous and bury Henry Starr in Dewey, Oklahoma. The twenty-nine-year career of outlawry had come to an end. Henry regained consciousness lying in what he knew would be his deathbed there in a cell in the Harrison jail. Johnson would earn the fee he had paid him for the funeral. He was confident of that. A doctor had seen him and treated him. He could tell. He was bandaged. He felt no pain. He felt tired—numb. When they discovered that he was conscious, a small crowd came into the cell and gathered around his cot—his deathbed. A photographer took his picture lying there. Henry didn’t care. He had seen photographs of the dead bodies of the Daltons taken at Coffeyville and of Ned Christie’s body roped to a slab and displayed in Arkansas. At least Henry was still alive. Someone spoke to him. He couldn’t tell who it was. The voice was faint and faraway sounding, but he did understand the question.

  “Henry, do you have anything to say?”

  It took all his strength and will, but Henry was determined to answer. He did have something to say, something he wanted everyone to hear, something for the reporters to write about, something for all the world to read. It didn’t matter who was there in the cell in the small crowd. It didn’t matter who it might be who had asked the question. He would give them his answer and someone would repeat it. It would be heard.

  “I’ve robbed more banks than any man in history,” he said.

  And that was the end. He died as he had lived—alone and in a crowd.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert J. Conley is a Western writer and editor who specializes in Cherokee lore. He is a former Professor of Indian Studies and English. He is currently living in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and is the author of two previous Double D Westerns, Back to Malachi and The Actor.

 

 

 
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