Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

“What is all this commotion?” he demanded, peering down the street in the direction of the noisemaking.

“I am afraid it is the posse,” I told him.

He glanced at me as if he wanted to dispute my theory, but curiosity got the better of both of us, and we jettisoned the argument in favor of leaning across the railings of the stage-office porch, straining for a glimpse of the returning riders. A moment later the procession came into view. Half a dozen mud-caked riders on sweat-soaked horses rounded the bend in the road. The three leaders were waving their hats and shouting to passersby, glorying in the impromptu parade. Three more solemn horsemen followed a short distance behind, each holding the reins of his own mount, each leading a second horse on a short rope. I did not immediately recognize any of the search-party members, but I knew at once the identity of the three ragged and weary persons tied to the saddles of the horses in tow.

Isaiah Stewart sat slumped forward, as if his weariness had overcome even his sorrow and his anger. His clothing was torn and muddy, and there were flecks of blood in his grizzled beard. He had not been taken easily, I thought. Beside him, Jackson Stewart sat up, defiantly glaring at the onlookers as though daring them to jeer at his plight. He is a great bear of a man, six feet in height and not lacking in girth, and all the welts and bruises upon him I imagined had been repaid with interest upon the persons of his captors. He wore iron shackles about his wrists, and over them a rope tying him to the saddle. Although Frankie Silver would have been regarded as the main prisoner, it was this accessory to her escape that the posse most feared. Mrs. Silver herself rode with eyes downcast, as oblivious to the stares of the crowd as she had been at her trial. Her hands were bound with rope, but her feet dangled at the horse’s side, not tied together beneath the belly of her mount, as were those of her accomplices. She was wearing men’s clothing: buckskin breeches and a homespun shirt beneath a man’s coat, and her blond hair tumbled out from beneath a wide-brimmed leather hat, although it must have been bound up when the searchers came upon them. She was small and sturdy enough to pass for a young boy. I thought the clothes must have belonged to Blackston Stewart, and I wondered if he had been left at home to tend the homestead, or if he had got away into the forest when the lawmen came.

An old man in the crowd called out: “How did ye take her, boys?”

One of the rear guard reined in his bay mare, and leaned back in the saddle with a grin of lazy triumph. Whatever happened, I thought, you had least to do with it. “Well,” he said, “it weren’t an easy hunt. It’s perilous country out there, and you could turn around twice and be lost, but we tracked them well enough, though the going was slow when they left the trail and took to the woods. We might not have caught them at all, but for the high water.”

Someone laughed and called out, “Come hell or high water, was it?”

“Some of both, I reckon,” said the rider. “We reckoned on them heading west into Buncombe County and then making for the Tennessee line, but that is not what they done. They was in Rutherford County when we caught up to them, trying to ford the river, which was so swollen from the spring rains that their horses could not manage the crossing.”

“Did you shoot it out with them?”

The sad little procession had moved on up the street now, and the rider looked after them as if he wanted to end the talk and catch up to the others, but after a moment he perceived that they were only a few yards from the jail, and there were townsmen aplenty surrounding them now, eager to have a tiny part in the recapture of a notorious outlaw so that they, too, might become tellers of tales. I watched the prisoners being dragged from their horses, and I wondered where it was they were headed. Rutherford County is due south of us, and not on the way to Tennessee. Perhaps the Stewarts originally came from down that way, and they were taking Frankie back to kinfolk there, or in South Carolina. Anywhere but here, I thought. For if ever they could have eluded the searchers and made them turn back with no more leads to follow, they would have got away. The sheriff had neither the means nor the heart to prolong the search for her. Another day would have seen her safe.

Seeing that he was no longer needed among the hunters, the straggling horseman mopped his brow with a muddy rag and turned his attention back to the little crowd that hung on his every word.

“Well, now, I can’t say that I heard tell of any shooting,” he said. “The fugitives were hoping to put so much distance between themselves and Burke County that they would never have to see us at all, and, failing that, they were thinking they could outsmart us. Old Frankie was dressed as a boy, and the other two were trying to get a loaded wagon over the river. So one of the trackers-a fellow name of Gouge, I think it was-went up to the wagon and says to the little lad, ‘You’re Frankie Silver, ain’t you?’ She ducks her head and says, ‘No, sir. My name is Tommy.’” The rider paused and grinned. “That big fellow yonder was a-driving the wagon, and he heard them talking. ‘That’s right!’ he hollers out. ‘ Her name is Tommy.’ ”

The listeners roared appreciatively, and several of them echoed, “ Her name is Tommy,” to impress it in their minds before they hurried away to regale their friends with the news.

I wondered if it had happened that way, or if the fellow had used the ride back to Morganton to come up with a rousing tale for the taverns. He would drink his fill tonight on the recital of that one, I thought. There would be revelry tonight in the inns of Morganton, I thought as I turned away. The hanging would take place after all.

Burgess Gaither

CONFESSION

Frankie Silver’s eight days of freedom had ended in capture, and the arrest of her father and brother for aiding in her escape. I had thought that such an act of disregard for the laws might turn the community against her once more, but it did not. We are a frontier people, still. Our parents’ generation comprised their own army to defend themselves against the attacks of the Indians, and they enforced their own laws within the settlements, so we are not yet complacent about taking orders from a far-off government. People seemed to think Frankie Silver’s escape was a sensible reaction to an unjust sentence of death. Perhaps they, too, remembered John Sevier in similar circumstances. If anything, the clamor for the prisoner’s release was even more strident, and the list of names upon the circulating petition grew ever longer.

I still had not signed it, however. I told myself that whatever I might think of the case, I did not know the facts concerning Charlie Silver’s death. Until I was satisfied on that point, I could not in good conscience ask that his killer be reprieved. I said as much to the sheriff, and to a number of well-meaning people who thrust petitions under my nose.

“She wants to confess.”

It was the eleventh of June. Thomas Wilson had found me in McEntire’s, sharing a pint with young Dr. Tate, who is a learned and kindred spirit in our little country town. Wilson stood looming over my chair like a black-suited crow, as gawky and unsmiling as ever. It is of little wonder to me that Mr. Wilson’s political career was short and unpropitious. I stared up at him, endeavoring to make sense of his blast of words. I said stupidly, “She… wants…”

“The prisoner. Frankie Silver! The wretched girl has finally got it into her head that the state means to kill her, and she has been weeping for hours on end. The sheriff tells me that she has abandoned herself to despair, but that some of her friends have visited with her in the jail-” He paused here and gave me such a meaningful look that I knew at once who the prisoner’s friends were, although Mr. Wilson is too much of a gentleman to say the names of wellborn ladies aloud in a public tavern.