We watched the countryside change from the rolling prairie and wooded watercourses that we knew so well to hills and cedar brakes, and we traveled for days without seeing another rider. On Big Caddo Creek in Stephens County, about a hundred miles from Denton, we found a cabin on a hillside that some poor fool had tried to make into a farm. He had either died or become wise, for it had been deserted so long that weeds were growing in the dirt floor. We moved in and spent several days pulling the weeds and repairing the corral fence. Arkansas found a worn-out shovel in the barn and even cleaned the stalls, and Henry and Seab rode into Breckenridge, fifteen miles away, with some of Sam's gold and bought a wagonload of oats and groceries and several jugs of liquor and hired a man to haul it. The teamster looked over the place and said, “You boys going to work it?” “We're thinking on it,” Seab said.
“Well, good thing you got plenty of help. You'll need it.”
For almost a month we
did
feel that we were settling there. In the evenings we would sit behind the cabin with a jug, looking up at the ruined fields on the hillside, and argue what would grow there and how long it would take to make the place pay. None of us were farmers, and there was no knowledge in our talk, but it was a pleasant way to spend the twilight. Maybe you've noticed it. Men talk differently at twilight than at other times of day. Their voices are softer, to match the light, and with whiskey warming their blood and crickets and night birds beginning their songs and horses moving in their quiet way about the corral, well, it all becomes a kind of music, full of peace.
“I sure wish my woman was here,” Henry would say every night. And Arkansas would grumble, “Mine, too.”
We even met some of the neighbors. They would ride by on horseback or be driving wagons home from Breckenridge, and some would stop and share our jug with us. Some would just wave as they passed. I don't remember all the names we made up for ourselves. Sam was “Sam Bushon,” and I called myself “Frank Allen,” after our first train robbery. The people seemed to accept us at face value. If any were suspicious of the gold we were spending at King Taylor's store or McClasen's, they didn't let on.
We had done nothing but run since the Mesquite robbery of two months before, and our bodies and minds soaked up the quiet. We even stopped talking much about our next job, the big haul that would give us all new lives. We fattened, and so did our horses. Lazy. That's what we were. And if we had been left alone, maybe we would be there yet, with crops growing in those rocky fields. It's not likely, I guess. But we had no thoughts of moving.
Then one day four farm boys passed our place on their plow mules. They kicked the beasts hard and constantly, urging them along the road, and each carried what must have been his household's whole supply of arms and cutlery. “What's happened?” Sam called to them.
“Posse forming at King Taylor's!” one of them shouted. “Sam Bass is in the neighborhood!”
Sam decided we stood a better chance of avoiding posses if we split into smaller groups for a while and traveled separately toward more familiar ground. So Seab and Arkansas and Henry took the packhorse and our spare mounts and went one way, and Sam and I, with enough provisions to last a week, headed eastward into the rough hills and cedar brakes of Palo Pinto County. If our brotherhood didn't reconvene somewhere along the way, we were to meet at Cove Hollow.
By evening Sam and I were about seven miles west of the town of Palo Pinto. We spotted a large log ranch house, and since the hills seemed empty, we thought it safe to stop and ask for shelter. We tucked our pistols and knives out of sight under our vests and knocked on the door. It was opened by a pleasant-looking gray-haired lady holding a lamp. Sam said, “Evening, ma'am. My name is Bushon, and this here's Mr. Allen. We've had a hard ride today, and wondered if we might find a little food and shelter here.”
The woman held the lamp high and close to us, looking hard at our faces and clothing. I was glad we were reasonably clean. She smiled and said, “Our men are gone. I take it for granted you are gentlemen?”
“Oh, yes, ma'am,” Sam said.
She nodded. “I'm Mrs. Roe. Put your horses up and come in. Supper's on the stove.”
When we returned from the barn, two young women were in the kitchen with Mrs. Roe. One was a slip of a girl, redheaded and freckled. The other was blonde and heavy-boned, but also freckled. I noticed Mrs. Roe had freckles, too. “These are my daughters,” she said. “Mrs. Maddox and Mrs. Maddox. They married brothers.”
I asked, “Where have your men gone?” It was a bold question, but I wanted to know whether posses were out in the neighborhood.
“Tom and Jake went to help build the church in Slaughter Valley,” the redhead said. “They should be home tonight. And Daddy's gone to heaven. Are you religious, Mr. Allen?”
“No, ma'am.”
She gave me a sly little smile. “Well, we don't take spirits ourselves, but Mama keeps a jug for visitors. Would you care to sample it?”
“Thank you, ma'am.”
She poured the whiskey and showed us into the parlor and lit the lamp on the little round table. It was a fancy lamp with a fancy shade covered with pictures of little red roses. The whole room was fancy, and large. It held a pretty red rug and a big horsehair sofa and a smaller settee covered with red roses like the lamp, two rocking chairs and even a piano with a large Bible on top. Lace things hung on the backs and arms of everything. A large painting of a solemn, bearded man, whom I guessed to be Mr. Roe, stared from an oval frame above the fireplace.
“Rest yourself, gentlemen,” said the redheaded Mrs. Maddox. She went out and closed the door quietly behind her.
I raised my glass to the painting. “To you, sir,” I said. “You didn't leave your widow empty-handed.”
“Nice spread, ain't it?” Sam said. “Too bad the girls are married. Maybe we should ride to Slaughter Valley and make something fall on them Maddox boys.”
Mrs. Roe's chicken and dumplings would have made a couple of murders worthwhile. I never ate anything better, even to this day, not even counting in the fluffy biscuits and the green beans and sweet, early corn from her garden. Sam and I ate until we were about to split, then Mrs. Roe said, “Save some room for the apple cobbler.” The cobbler was swimming in cream, and I said, “Do you folks eat like this every night?”
Mrs. Roe smiled shyly and said, “I like men who eat.”
Sam and I stayed at the table and drank another cup of coffee while the women washed the dishes. The shine of the lamplight on their hair and the quiet swish of their skirts as they moved about the small room and their soft voices made me sad. Well, not sad exactly. More a feeling of losing something important, or not getting something I was supposed to have. Mrs. Roe dried her hands and said, “Would you gentlemen join us for evening prayers?”
“We'd be happy to, ma'am,” I said, and'we followed her into the parlor. She took the Bible down from the piano and handed it to Sam. “Would you do us the honor, Mr. Bushon?”
Sam blushed. “Mr. Allen does it better, ma'am.”
“Mr. Allen can read, then, and you can choose your passage.”
“I like the one about Joseph's dream,” he said.
She found the passage and handed the Bible to me. I read about the seven years of plenty and the seven years of drought in Egypt.
“It all come true,” Sam said.
“Egypt must be a lot like Texas,” the blonde daughter said. We laughed, and then we knelt, and Mrs. Roe said a long prayer thanking God for rain and grass and asking Him to withhold His judgment and forgive our sins and protect Mr. Bushon and Mr. Allen on their journey. Then we rose, and Mrs. Roe picked up the lamp.
“I'm sure you gentlemen must be tired,” she said. “Let me show you to your room.”
The rosewood four-poster left just enough space in the little room for a trunk and a small washstand with a mirror over it. It was the most beautiful bed I had ever seen, and I said so.
Mrs. Roe beamed. “It was my mother's. She died in it. We brought it all the way from Louisiana.” She turned back the white coverlet. The sheets and pillows glowed in the yellow light. “I hope you'll be comfortable. Good night, gentlemen.”
She set the lamp on the washstand and left, and Sam sat down on the bed and ran his hand over the pillow. “God, I wish I was a Maddox,” he said.
“Which one would you court?”
“The blonde one. I like them strong.”
“The redhead's got more fire.”
We heard the women talking in the kitchen, then the back door slammed. I looked out the window. The blonde daughter was walking toward the woodpile, carrying a lamp. She pulled the ax out of the chopping block with a single yank, and returned to the kitchen. “Hey, Sam, she brought the ax into the house,” I said. “I reckon they don't want any monkey business.”
We laid our pistols and knives on the bed and were about to undress when there was a knock at the door. Sam glanced at the weapons, but said, “Come in.”
All three women were standing there, the blonde holding the ax. Their eyes widened when they saw the guns. “I think you gentlemen should give us those weapons for the night,” Mrs. Roe said, her voice trembling. “It looks like our men aren't going to get back tonight, and⦠Well, we're only women.”
“We'd like to do that, ma'am, but we can't,” Sam said politely. “Mr. Allen and me has enemies, and if they was to catch us without our guns, we'd die. Don't worry, ma'am. We won't do you no harm.”
Mrs. Roe paled. “Well, I must get something out of that trunk, then.” She moved tentatively into the room, and the blonde daughter took a step forward, ready with the ax. Sam and I didn't move while Mrs. Roe rummaged in the trunk, then slammed the lid. Her hands were full of shotgun shells. “Good night, gentlemen,” she said.
“Sure do wish I was a Maddox,” Sam said when they were gone.
Our bodies sank gratefully into the deep feather mattress. The rocking chairs in the parlor were creaking. The ax lay in the lap of one skirt, I guessed, and the shotgun in another.
Next morning, the ax and the shotgun were nowhere in sight, but the rings under their eyes told me the women hadn't slept. They were polite during breakfast, but didn't say much, and Sam and I ate in a hurry, then went to the barn and saddled up. As we led the horses back to the house, all three women stood at the door watching. “Much obliged for your hospitality, Mrs. Roe,” Sam said. He laid two golden coins in her hand, tipped his hat and said, “Goodbye, ladies.” The women didn't reply, but the redhead smiled. We mounted, and Sam pointed to a gap in the hills to the west. “Keep a skinned eye when we ride through there, Mr. Allen,” he said.
We rode westward through the gap and out of sight, then rounded a hill and headed back eastward, well clear of the house. “When them church-builders get home we'll have some riders after us,” Sam said.
We spotted them the next day, resting in a cedar brake on Ioni Creek, but they didn't see us. That afternoon, we found Seab and Arkansas and Henry at Mcintosh's store on Dillingham's Prairie. We drank a beer, then headed toward Denton County. “What now?” Seab asked.
“Let's change our luck,” Sam said. “Let's go find Jenny.”
Arkansas was the only one of us not known in Denton, and he wasn't named on any of the warrants. So Sam sent him into town. When he returned to our hideout on Hickory Creek he said, “It's full of law. The hotels is full, and there's tents. That Pinkerton's still at the Wheeler Saloon.” “Did you find Jenny?” Sam asked.
“She's at Work's Livery Stable. People go around and look at her. Frank's horse is there, too.”
“I figured,” Sam said. “I figured they'd put her on show.”
Next morning we rode together to the edge of town, arriving not long before daylight, then drifted in one by one and reassembled in an alley near the stable, not far from the square. The town was very quiet, very dark except for the lantern shining in the door of the stable.
“Henry and Seab and Arkansas will guard the door,” Sam said. “Frank and me will go get our property back.”
Sam and I dismounted as if we were customers. Charlie McDonald, who used to play marbles with me when I was a kid, came to the door. He didn't recognize us in the darkness. I pulled my gun and said, “Morning, Charlie. How are you?”
His eyes widened. He raised his hands. “Morning, Frank. Morning, Sam.”
“We come to get our horses, Charlie,” Sam said. “Go saddle them.”
“I can't, Sam,” Charlie said. “Dad Egan says they're evidence.”
I don't know why I did it. I was nervous, I guess, and tired. I slammed Charlie on the side of the head with my pistol. He groaned and fell.
“Don't do that,” Sam said. “Now we'll have to saddle them ourselves.”
The stalls were full, the stable heavy with the odors of horses and manure and hay and grain. Some animals still stood sleeping. Others moved quietly in the straw that covered the floor, snuffling at their empty troughs. I heard a different rustle in the hayloft above me. I swung my gun to the ladder and said, “Come down or you're dead.” A shaggy head showed itself. “Hello, Mr. Work,” I said. “You got a gun?”
He dropped a pistol to the floor beside me. “Come take care of Charlie,” I said.
The Denton Mare and my bay were in adjacent stalls in the back of the building. Both our saddles were on the partition between the stalls, my saddlebags and coat still tied on mine, covered with hay dust.
“Old Dad's careless with his evidence, ain't he?” Sam said.
“He never expected to have need of it,” I said. We saddled quickly and led the horses out. Charlie was standing now, holding the side of his bloody head.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Frank,” John Work said. “Dr. Ross never trained you for this.”