Эл Дженнингс: Through the Shadows with O'Henry

"If you had nothing to do with it, give up and clear yourself. That's the way to make them pay."

One of those sudden shifts from command to appeal softened my father's face. "Do you want to bring disgrace on the name?" he asked.

"The name be damned and the law and everything connected with it. I hate it."

"If you don't come in and clear yourself, I'm finished with you."

"I can't clear myself," I told him. "The Harliss range harbors outlaws. I can't bring them in to prove an alibi for me. Harliss wasn't there at the time. If I did give up, I couldn't establish my innocence."

"Then you're guilty?"

Not in all the lawlessness of my early life, nor in all the frenzy of sorrow and revenge after the murder, had such a full tide of storming violence beaten down the discretion of my nature. If he distrusted me what had I to expect from enemies?

I went out from my father's house, lashed with a desperate, unappeasable fury. I wanted something to happen that once and for all would put me beyond the pale.

I slept out on the range and the next morning rode toward Arbeka. I had eaten nothing the day before. On the public road through the timber on the old trail west from Fort Smith was a little country store. I could have carried off nearly all its contents in my slicker.

Five men were lounging on the bench near the horse rack when I threw my bridle over the pole. Their horses were tied. I couldn't tell whether they were marshals or horse-thieves from the look of them. Whatever difference there is favors the horse-thief.

I bought some cheese and crackers. When I came out my horse was gone.

"Where's my horse?" The fellow felt the hot blast of anger in the challenge.

"Ran away," he answered.

"Ran?" I snapped at him. "Some of you fellows turned him loose."

In the glade about 200 yards distant, I saw my horse nibbling grass. I ran down, mounted and was just galloping off when a shot whizzed past, then a clash, a volley, and the next moment the horse lunged sideward and thumped to the ground, pinning my leg under him.

They were possemen out to get me on the holdup. They were five to one and they didn't even try to take me on the porch. They fired without calling for a surrender. It was better to get a suspected trainrobber dead than alive. The question of guilt and the surety of reward were then settled beyond dispute.

I pulled myself free, started firing like a madman, and saw two of them drop. I hid behind a tree, reloaded and went for the porch, shooting as I went. Two of them ran into the timber.

As I got to the store the fifth tumbled over into the brush. I ran inside, took up an ax and smashed the place to pieces. The owner crawled out from behind an empty cider barrel. I didn't care what I did. The viciousness of their attack infuriated me. I busted one at him as he crawled out the back door.

The drawer in the counter was open. There was $27.50 in it. I took it. I needed no money, but the theft filled me with happiness. I had taken a definite step. I was a criminal now. My choice was made. I was one with the outlaws. For the first time since Ed's death, I felt at peace. I knew that I would have a gang with me now to the end.

The big iron-gray horse that had stood undisturbed during the ruckus, I mounted and started back to the Harliss ranch. My foot was slipping up and down in my boot. I looked down.

The boot was filled with blood. One of the bullets had struck through the muscles above my ankle. I picked it out with my pen-knife and stuffed the hole with a puff-ball weed.

When I got to the range I did not stop at the house but made for the cover in the timber. As I came near a pang of fear shot through me. It was long past midnight, but they had a fire blazing. One of the men raised himself stealthily and glanced toward me.

He nodded.

The sudden elation at the store was dissipated. Should I go on? Could I rely on these men? I no longer felt at ease with them. Should I tell them what had happened? The silence of the fugitive is inbred. The reserve of the savage in his armor. Innocent, I had trusted the outlaws; guilty, I doubted their loyalty.

"Hello," Andy called.

"I'm coming over," I answered, guiding my horse into the deep stream.

"Want some coffee?" Jake asked. I was limping miserably. They asked no question.

"Looks like you got snagged," Bill offered.

"Got shot. They tried to kill me. Soaked my horse full of lead. They beat it. I robbed the damned store."

"Reckon you're with us."

Andy settled it.

They had a cozy camp hidden there in the lap of the mountains. An old wagon sheet, stretched between two poles, roofed the kitchen. Bill was making biscuits in the flour sack, shuffling up just enough dough and not wetting the rest.

I was lying on the ground at the fire. A man on horseback in the level at the edge of the creek had reined in and sat staring at me.

Andy nodded to him. He came over. It was Bob, the fourth man of the gang.

"It's O. K.," he said. "She stops at the tank."

"She rolls in at 11:25. We'll get the old man to dump her.

"And if it ain't there, we'll have to take up a collection from the passengers."

They sat under the wagon sheet, stowing in the biscuits and coolly doping out the "medicine."

I was getting soft in the backbone. I hadn't figured to jump right into a train-robbery. Here were four men deliberately planning to stick up an express car as leisurely as a batch of Wall-street brokers hatching out a legitimate steal. Little quivering arrows of nervousness went pricking through me. I felt that I had cast in my lot with Andy and his gang too hastily. The darkness fretted me. I began casting about for an alibi.

"Broke?" I asked. "I have some money. I've got $327. It's yours."

Andy flipped his fingers. Nobody else paid the slightest attention to the offer. Five men were better than four. I was committed. The M. K. T. was due to be robbed at 11:25 on the following night as she chugged across the bridge on the Verdigras river north of the Muskogee. The crossing was about 40 miles from the Spike S ranch.

Toward morning we turned in. I was the only one who didn't sleep. Andy told me afterward that green hands always feel the yellow streak the first time. When the light came sneaking through the clouds, I began to feel better. The oppression of the night is an uncanny thing to a man beset with fearful indecisions.

There wasn't another word said about the holdup. We lolled about and let the horses take their ease until the late afternoon. I was anxious to be on the road—to have the suspense over—to start the scrap and be done with it.

We mounted about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and made ahead at an amiable trot, stopping now and then to rest. We wanted to keep the horses cool for the return. It was coal dark when we rode into a clump of timber, tied one of the horses to a cotton-wood tree and threw the other bridles over his saddle horn. It all helps in the getaway.

As soon as we climbed down through the brush, the terror of the night before, a thousand times intensified, jabbed through me. The branches of every tree rustled with alarms. I expected any moment to see marshals step from behind the trunks or angry citizens swoop down on us. The nearest house was five miles distant and the only living soul around, the old pump man. But the dry sticks crackled like a festive bonfire. I wanted to caution them to pick their way.

I felt as though the entire responsibility rested on my shoulders. It occurred to me the whole affair had been bungled. They had not planned it out enough.

"Suppose the old man won't stop the train?" the question popped out. Andy laughed in my ear.