Sam Bass Read online

  So we were glad when in the late afternoon we heard a voice drifting on the wind from below, shouting, “Sam! Sam Bass!” It was Jim Murphy, and Sam and I ran out of the cabin, waving our arms and calling back to him. Jim worked his horse up the slope and dismounted and took a quart of whiskey from his saddlebags. He handed it to me and said, “In honor of the day, from the Murphy family and the Parlor Saloon.” His face, what I could see of it between his hatbrim and his turned-up collar, was red and not at all cheerful. He led his horse to the corral and turned it in and walked back to us, rubbing his hands together. “The law’s got Henry,” he said.

  “What for?” Sam exclaimed.

  Jim waved us toward the cabin, and we followed him inside. He stood in front of the fire, his back to us, warming his hands. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there,” he said. “Let’s have a drink.”

  “Damn it, Jim, what happened?” Sam said.

  Jim drew the cork and took a long pull on the bottle. He coughed quietly. “It was Pinkertons,” he said. “They kept saying Henry’s name was Nixon and that he was with Joel Collins in Nebraska. Them and Dad Egan surrounded his house last night and kept hollering for him to give hisself up. And Henry kept hollering back that he ain’t been out of Denton since summer. Hell, Dad knowed that.”

  “Tom Nixon’s in Canada,” Sam said. “Henry wasn’t nowhere near us.”

  “I know that!” Jim yelled angrily. “You think I don’t know that? Now let me tell it! Old Henry wouldn’t give hisself up. He just kept telling them he was innocent. But this morning they said they was going to storm the house if Henry didn’t give hisself up, so he did. He was afraid his wife and younguns would get hurt. So he just walked out and give hisself up on this fine Christmas morning.” Jim waved the bottle toward the door, where the wind was howling. “And his wife and kids come to me crying, and his wife says, ‘Do something, Jim. You know this ain’t right.’”

  “It ain’t right, by God! Tom Nixon’s in Canada!”

  “Go tell that to Dad Egan and them Yankee detectives. I went to Dad’s house and said, ‘Look, Dad, Henry was working for me all during September. That’s when that robbery was, ain’t it?’ And old Dad just picked at his fingernails with his knife, and he said, ‘The Pinkertons said he was their man, and who am I to doubt it? I ain’t sorry to see Henry Underwood out of Denton County. I hope he goes to the gallows.’”

  “That righteous bastard!” Sam yelled. “We’ll get Henry back, by God!”

  “They done taken him straight to Sherman and put him on a train,” Jim said. “And there was about four Pinkertons with him. Even if you was to catch up with them, they’d just kill Henry and say you done it. There’s a reward for him. For Nixon, anyway.”

  “How much?” Sam asked.

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  “How much for me?”

  “The same, I guess, if they know you was in it. They figure Collins for the leader, and they done got him.”

  We fell into silence. Jim, standing with his back to the fire, looked at me and then at Sam and then back again, and Sam and I were looking at him. The wind seemed to be dying a little. The logs were popping and cracking in the fire. I couldn’t think of a thing to say, but I knew somebody ought to say something. Then Jim said quietly, “How’s things, Frank?”

  “Fine.”

  “We miss you in town. When you coming back?”

  “Leave Frank alone,” Sam said. “He’s staying with me.”

  I kept thinking about Henry’s wife and children and how confused they must be by it all, and what a rotten Christmas it had been for everybody, and what a tiny bandit band we were now. Sam must have been thinking the same thing, for he said, “Join us, Jim. We need a good man.”

  “It would kill Daddy,” Jim said. “Look what it’s doing to Henry’s family.”

  “Henry’s been in trouble all his life. You know that. And your Daddy wouldn’t never know.”

  “I can’t, Sam.”

  “Later, maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you know a man or two who want some easy money? We need help.”

  “I’ll check around,” Jim said.

  “Make sure they’re good ones,” Sam said. “We won’t have time to teach them much.”

  “All right.” Jim rose and stretched like a cat. “I got to go. It’s Christmas, and I’m expected.”

  We walked him out to the corral and watched him swing into the saddle. As he was about to start down the hill Sam said, “Wait.” He took five double-eagles out of his pocket and handed them to Jim. “Send them to Henry when you know where he’s at.”

  Jim looked at the coins and smiled. “I’ll send him greenbacks. These wouldn’t help his case if the law got hold of them.”

  The wind definitely was dying, and the cold, fresh air felt good after the smokey confinement of the cabin. When Jim had gone, we led our horses to the water and watched them drink. They were quiet and rested, and the cold hair of their hides and the strong animal warmth underneath was pleasant to the touch. “I’m sick of this place,” Sam said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “And go where?”

  “To steal something.”

  So we saddled up and rode out of Cove Hollow. I was glad to go.

  When the driver sighted us my rifle was aimed straight at him. Alarm spread over his face. He pulled frantically on his lines, shouting, “Whoa! Whoa!” The man on the box beside him, whom I guessed to be a passenger from his fancy dress, grabbed at the side of the seat to avoid being toppled overboard.

  “One move, and you die!” Sam shouted.

  “No trouble!” the driver replied. “You won’t get no trouble out of me!”

  Sam ran to the coach and opened the door. I shifted the rifle from the driver to the man beside him. “Get down,” I said. “Go for a gun, and your brains will be all over this road.”

  The man climbed down and joined the four men Sam rousted from the inside. He lined them in a row and began searching them. I kept my rifle pointed at the driver’s chest. He was a small, skinny man with a droopy mustache and squinty brown eyes that stared at me without blinking. He wore a pistol in a holster, but it was well back from his hands, which still held the lines. “Stay away from that gun, and you won’t die,” I said.

  “I will. I can’t hit the side of a barn, nohow.”

  I smiled behind my mask. “You ever been robbed before?”

  “Once. The other side of Weatherford.”

  His horses seemed to welcome the stop. They cocked their hind legs and dropped their heads as if sleeping. One snorted and shook his head. The harness jingled. “Whoa!” the driver said.

  “How long you been driving these nags?” I asked.

  “Nigh onto three years. It was four men that robbed me last time. Mighty chancey doing it with just two, ain’t it?”

  “No. It’s easy.”

  “I told them they ought to give me a shotgun guard. Cheap company!”

  Sam was herding the passengers back into the coach. The man who had sat beside the driver got inside with the others. Sam slammed the door, and I said, “You can go now.”

  “All right, son. Take it easy, hear?”

  The driver slapped the lines. The horses bolted like one animal and left us standing in their dust. A passenger poked his head out the window, then pulled it quickly back inside. The driver never looked back. Sam jerked his mask down and grinned. “Better class customers this time, pard. Four hundred dollars.” He sauntered to me, holding his hands behind his back. “And I got a Christmas present for you. Pick a hand.”

  I tapped his left shoulder, and he said, “You got the pretty one.” He held up two gold watches swinging like pendulums on gold chains and handed me the one I had picked. It was one of those with a lid. The letters G.W.C. were engraved on the lid, and when I pushed the stem it opened and played a little music box tune and revealed the picture of a woman inside the lid, a young woman with long black hair and brown e
yes, wearing a blue dress.

  “Hoo!” Sam said. “No wonder he didn’t want to give it up!”

  Sam divided the money, and we rode toward Denton. And I felt wonderful. I had never owned two hundred dollars, and my possession of the musical watch seemed to lift me into a different class of humanity altogether. I pulled it out now and then and popped the lid and listened to the music, and Sam and I would laugh to see the horses’ ears whipping back and forward, trying to figure out what they were hearing. “Hey,” Sam said. “Why don’t we ride up north and tap another stage. It’s a shame to quit while we’re on a winning streak.”

  “Fine. But I’ve got to eat first. My backbone’s rubbing a hole in my gut.”

  In the early afternoon we came upon a tiny cabin standing alone on the prairie, unprotected from the wind by trees or hills. The stalks of last year’s corn stood rotting in a small field beside the place. Smoke curled from the mud chimney, and I persuaded Sam to stop and ask for food. We rode to the door, and he yelled, “Hello! Anybody home?” We heard movement inside, but no one replied. Sam yelled, “Open! We’re friends!” The latch moved, and the door opened a crack, “We’re traveling through,” Sam said. “We need food. We’re willing to pay.”

  The door opened wider, and a voice said, “Pay?”

  “Yes. We’ve got money. Do you have food?”

  The door swung open then and revealed the muzzle of a shotgun and a woman holding it. She was a gaunt creature in a ragged gray dress. Her brown hair was matted and hung almost to her waist, and her close-set black eyes glared with a heat that verged on madness. I knew she wouldn’t hesitate to blast us if she took the notion. “We mean no harm, ma’am,” I said. “We’re just hungry.”

  “You’ve got money?” Her voice had a strange, faraway quality, as if it came out of darkness.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sam said. “We’re willing to pay.”

  She grabbed the door, still holding the shotgun on us with her free hand. It was a heavy gun, but she held it steadily. She backed into the cabin and pulled the door shut. I heard voices and the clatter of pans inside. Then she swung the door open so hard that it banged against the wall. Two filthy, almost naked children that seemed to be girls clung to her skirt. She and they moved slowly toward us, she holding the shotgun in the crook of her elbow, her finger still on the trigger. She offered me something wrapped in a towel. “Cornbread,” she said. “It’s all I got.”

  “That’s fine, ma’am,” I said. “Is your man about?”

  She swung the gun to my chest again. “Mind your business. Where’s the money?”

  Sam leaned down and handed her a double-eagle. She stared at it, frenzy in her eyes. “What is it? Is that gold?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sam said.

  “How much? I ain’t never seen none.”

  “Twenty dollars, ma’am.”

  It was so quiet I could hear one of the children sucking her thumb. “It’s only cornbread,” the woman said. “I ain’t got nothing else.”

  “It’s all right,” Sam said. “The money’s yours.”

  “You ain’t Yankees, are you, having gold?”

  “No, ma’am. Not Yankees.”

  “Then bless you, son. God bless you.” Her voice was on the verge of tears. “What’s your name?” “Sam Bass, ma’am.” “I’ll remember you. I’ll pray for you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She swung the gun toward him. “Go now.” She backed through the door, pulling her children after her.

  As we rode away I threw the towel on the ground and broke the pone in half and handed Sam a piece. The cornbread was old and cold, but my empty gut didn’t care. Sam and I didn’t speak until the pone was gone, washed down with water from Sam’s canteen. Then he said, “Poor woman. I wonder if she’s got a man.”

  “If she does, I pity him, too,” I said. And we rode in silence for some distance, the woman much on my mind.

  It was full dark when we arrived at Cove Hollow and bedded down. I felt as if I had just fallen asleep when Sam rousted me. It wasn’t yet daybreak. We had our coffee and made a sackful of bacon-and-biscuit sandwiches, then saddled up and struck out toward Sherman. About midafternoon we sighted the town but avoided it and turned westward on the road to Gainesville. When we reached the cross-timbers we scouted for a thicket where we could conceal ourselves and still have a good view of the road. Sam’s mood was cloudy that day. Whenever I tried to start a conversation, he answered shortly and let it die. So I amused myself with my new watch, popping the lid, checking the time, listening to the music, studying the face of the beautiful black-haired woman. But Sam said, “Stop that. It makes me nervous.”

  At last we heard the sounds of the coach, and I jumped up and pulled my mask over my face. But Sam grabbed my arm and said, “No, let’s skip it.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a feeling I got. I think this stage is unlucky.”

  “Christ, Sam!” But anger clouded his eyes now, and I knew that if I pushed him we would fight. So I jerked my mask down and watched helplessly as the stage passed our hiding place. Nothing about it looked unlucky to me. But we climbed back into our saddles and had a long, quiet ride back to Cove Hollow. Our horses were exhausted when we arrived, and so was I. I rolled myself into my blankets and laid my watch beside my head, next to my pistol. The initials G.W.C. winked at me in the firelight. Those are the initials of the name on my shingle now, and my children hear many stories I make up about the lady in blue.

  For weeks Sam was jumpy, and every effort of mine to find out what was troubling him met with angry looks and sharp words. He spent days sitting before the fire, smoking cigarette after cigarette and staring into the flames while I read my medical books and did whatever else I could find to keep my mind and hands occupied. I began to suspect that my friend had lost his nerve. I considered leaving him and striking out on my own, lest my career wither like the brittle leaves that still clung to some of the trees around us. But one night in the middle of February we were awakened by a horse nickering below us. We rolled out of our blankets, pistols in hand, and went to the door. The horses were scrambling up the slope now. “Who goes?” Sam shouted.

  “Are you Sam Bass?” a voice replied.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Friends. From Jim Murphy.”

  “How many friends?”

  “Two.”

  “Keep your hands in sight.”

  Two horsemen rode onto our limestone ledge. One, a short, stocky man, rode a small black, and the other, a lanky fellow with long, light hair and beard, sat a gray pacing pony. “Jim told us you was looking for help,” he said.

  Sam stuck his pistols in his belt, and I stirred up the fire to put on the coffee. “Who are you?” Sam asked.

  The stocky one, whose eyes and hair were almost as dark as Sam’s, said his name was Seaborn Barnes. He worked in a pottery five miles south of Denton, he said, and was tired of the confinement of a potter’s life. He was no older than I, but he had spent a year in the Fort Worth jail for killing a man. When he finally went to trial, the jury had pronounced him innocent. People, he said, called him “Seab,” which was what he liked to be called. His face was somber. He spoke so softly I had trouble catching his words.

  His lanky companion spoke loudly in a high, sing-song voice and laughed a lot, showing a mouth with few teeth. His cheeks were sunken. Long blond whiskers covered his narrow jaw. His pale blue eyes were grotesque. The left one twinkled and shifted from Sam to me and back while he talked. But the right one, which was larger than the other, had no light in it and gazed always straight ahead. I must have stared at it, for he said, “It’s glass,” and tapped it with his finger. The click of his fingernail against his eye sent a shiver up my spine.

  “Can you shoot with that eye?” Sam asked.

  “Not with that one. But I can with the other one.” He laughed loudly at his joke.

  His name was Tom Spotswood, and he had left a wife and a small son on a ran
ch somewhere northeast of Denton. Although his shiny yellow hair, which hung almost to his shoulders, made him appear young, he said he fled to Texas from Missouri just after the war, so he must have been between thirty-five and forty.

  “What for?” Sam asked.

  Spotswood stopped talking and glared at Sam with his good eye.

  “I like to know who I’m working with,” Sam said.

  “Killed a man. Two, in fact. The circus come to Sedalia. I had taken a fancy to a young lady that worked for it. Bareback rider. I got drunked up and was in an argument with a carpenter about which one was going to carry her home. I shot him. A store clerk caught one of my bullets, too. I climbed on my horse and lit out of there. The clerk died, too, I heared later. I reckon nobody carried that young lady home.”

  “Had any trouble in Texas?” Sam asked.

  “Not much. Tried to nail me for cattle-stealing in Wise County. Killed two niggers in Collin County. Got off both times.”

  The coffee boiled over, and Barnes got up and lifted the pot off the fire. I handed him the cups. “Speaking of women,” he said, “I was in Dallas the other day. Met one that knows you, Sam.”

  “I don’t know no women in Dallas,” Sam said.

  Barnes handed us the cups of steaming coffee. “Well, she said she knowed you. I told her I was from Denton County, and she asked about you. Name’s Maude.”