Daniel Woodrell - The Outlaw Album - Stories

Pitt Mackeson tried to flare me by mentioning in a bad mouth the incident with the Dutch boy.

“If the boy had freed the rope the hanging would’ve been scotched and required doing over,” I said.

“Judas worked quick, too,” said Pitt Mackeson.

Coleman Younger stroked the Enfield and chambered a round. “You did right,” he said. “Dead from the front is no more dead than from the back. It is a question of opportunity.”

“So is chicken stealing,” Mackeson said.

My arms ached already from the thought of digging his new home, for I was thinking he would soon be in it.

“Jake did right.”

Arch Clements untied the prisoners and told them to stand, then retied them in a file of sorts. “Stay in your line, soldier boys,” he said in his squeaky voice. “For we shall march your meals down.”

Coleman Younger placed his hand on top of my head as he stood. “It was nothing,” he said, “but right.” He ran his hand along the smooth stock of the Enfield, then raised it to his shoulder. He sighted into the belly of the prisoner at the head of the column.

“Leave off with the jokes,” the prisoner said.

The Enfield fired and the first three Yankees tumbled.

Coleman Younger chambered another round. “I would’ve thought more,” he said. “So far this ain’t special.”

The rest of the camp was dropping letters, gun rags, needles, tin cups, and favored corncobs to watch. I thought Captain Quantrill might be peeved by this employment of his prisoners, but he made no move to halt it.

The next shot felled only two, and not cleanly. Their moans sounded like man and wife in a feather bed.

Coleman Younger chambered another round.

“Not exactly a Sharps, is it?” he said.

Little Arch made a straight line of the Yankees again as they had drifted some. Alf Bowden was among the standing, and he called my name, which it must’ve hurt him to do.

“Let us save one,” I said. I pulled Alf Bowden from the line, he being so limp he fell at my touch. “We can send him back to General Ewing, maybe, as a witness that his new law will cut both ways.”

There was blood in the air. It drifted over my bare hands, spotting them like some rare mist. Alf Bowden was yet on his knees, his hands clutching at my legs, pulling himself toward me. The rare mist had freckled one of his cheeks, and his hair had been touched up at the ends by the same breeze, giving him a vaguely pheasant aspect.

The man and wife in the feather bed slept now, and the silence was glass, poised for the shatter.

“We all had friends,” Coleman Younger said. He chambered another round. He was staring at me more thoughtfully than I found comfortable. “That is all off now.”

“There is something to be gained by this sparing,” I said. I did not believe what I had said, but I said it, and hoped only to utter more dream-babble that would justify it.

“I yearn to hear about it,” Coleman Younger said.

I was losing a comrade, this I could see. I had no retort.

A murderer of slyer instincts saved me and made of me a hero. Captain Quantrill had cozied up to us as we were engaged. He held a palm toward Coleman Younger, Little Arch, and Pitt Mackeson, who was fiddling with something near his holster. He then fixed me with a reverent gaze, an approving light coming to his eyes.

Alf Bowden babbled into my toes, his arms encircling my boots, his face between them.

“I quite see it,” Captain Quantrill said. “Yes. We shall send him over to Sigel’s brigade of Dutchmen near Warrensburg.” Captain Quantrill worked his hands together as if to wash them. His feet were moving in little hops, and he would surely have danced had there been a suitable partner handy. “Oh, yes. They far outnumber us. They will want to make quick time and to do that they will come through Creve Coeur Gap. Oh, my, yes.”

His plan could not be missed. Creve Coeur Gap was a narrow slit between two long bluffs that flanked the Blackwater River. General Franz Sigel, alerted by the winner from my mistake, and our most hated enemy, would seek the shortest route to our destruction—through the tall bluffs, thick timber, and slender passage afforded by Creve Coeur Gap.

“Just so,” I said.

Coleman Younger and the others began to nod, then smile at me, their lips raising only on one side of their mouths.

“Jake Roedel,” Coleman Younger said. “You are brilliant with mercy.”

I had not foreseen this plan, but I was giving thanks for its arrival on more than one score. It had saved me my comrades and blessed me with an opportunity named Franz Sigel. He was called a general, and to Yankees and Dutchmen he was so. His very name herded furies into my heart. In my father’s household he had been a saint, or near enough to it to have his picture above the mantel. He drummed up Dutchmen from among those foreigners who had come to America wanting to remain so. He oppressed me, and I longed to sight in on him. I had seen him lure them on, making himself a patriarch for those who would not mix, leading them to Fit Mit Sigel. Oh, the battles my father and I had on Sigel’s account. We raged in his language, my face puffing, and his blue stubborn eyes glowing beneath his thick Prussian brows. He will keep you foreign, I said, and make you snobs about it. Is this wrong? was his reply. We never agreed; I chose to side with Americans and lost entry to the house that raised me.

I led Alf Bowden to a stew pot and fed him.

The brilliance of mercy being a thing that requires judicious use, the other Yankees died. Two shots.

When Alf Bowden could once more keep his feet beneath himself, we set him off on foot toward Sigel’s brigade. It was over twenty miles, and he could not arrive there before dawn.

Around the campfires that night we cleaned our pistols, as we carried from four to eight apiece, the many shots the handguns afforded us over rifles being our chief asset, and the ace that allowed our small group to gamble with much larger ones.

There was considerable youth still in us, as by age that is what we were, and this, we felt, would carry the field. Setbacks had come our way, but cheerful, straight-backed desire to trade shots and victories wiped those from our minds.

There was much to look forward to that night as we oiled barrels and checked powder levels.

As I finished my hickory deep-dish water ladle, I listened to the men. Idle chatter about Coleman Younger’s parole procedures dominated. Many speculated about the impulse for his actions, as he was not regularly cruel. What were his motives when he sighted that Enfield on the Union file, voices wondered, then squeezed the trigger? There were answers. Some seemed to suspect the scientific impulse, but I, I thought the priestly. He was gracing me for the Dutch boy. I could not rest with that in mind.

Before dawn we had reached Creve Coeur Gap and rendered the lush greenery and sweet earth bluffs into a slaughterhouse. We perched on the ridges, then spaced ourselves down the far slopes, making a vee that promised clear shooting for all.

The sun was not yet straight in the sky when our scouts alerted us that troops were approaching. Captain Quantrill was devilish with his logic, for the Yankee-Dutchmen galloped headlong into our surprise. I searched the blue ranks for Alf Bowden but did not see him. My position was such that General Sigel was beyond my range.

The Yankees came on. We waited for the signal from Black John or Captain Quantrill, and I knew that I was among comrades now, for they had put their lives at stake over a plan they believed to be of my design.

I had spared one man and profited with a massacre of Dutchmen.

The signal was given.

I became famous for this.