Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

I had no chance to peddle those ponies because the deputies rode in at daybreak the next morning. Pocketed my twenty dollars, lashed my wrists behind my back, and boosted me into the saddle. As we rode out behind the ponies, I heaved around to stare at my huddled family a last time, but with arms bound tight, I could not even wave.

With bitter weather hard behind an iron sky to northward, and no man to help her and no food, Mandy had finally lost heart and sank down weeping. Though I barked at him to stay out of the way, my oldest in his thin torn jacket and split soggy boots came running and hollering amongst their stirrups until he got knocked sprawling in the muddy tracks. Poor Sonborn thought the world of me and I never did learn why, because my face stiffened at the sight of him and my heart, too. Every time I remember how he ran after me that day, I feel all wrong in my heart but I could not help it.

In the Territories, stealing horses was a crime far worse than murder, which was very common and mostly well-deserved. I could count my lucky stars, the lawmen told me, grinning like coyotes, that they hadn’t strung me from the nearest cottonwood. Perhaps these men felt merciful because they were in on the whole frame-up, which they hardly bothered to deny. On January fourth of 1890, in the county court there in Van Buren, I was given fifteen years at hard labor and carted off to Arkansas State Prison.

I will say this for Eddie Reed, he knew what he owed me for my friendly counsel. He moved my family into a good household in Broken Bow, in the Choctaw Nation, where Mandy would earn their room and board as cook and housekeeper. Reed did not live long after that, being even wilder than his father. A drunk at twelve, a moonshiner running likker into the Indian Country by age fourteen, he was a robber, gunslinger, and killer all of his short life. The following year, convicted of horse theft, he was sentenced to five years in prison. The story goes that his sister Rosie Lee pled with Judge Parker before sentencing to give that remorseful orphaned boy another chance, and the Hanging Judge told her it would do no good. Said, “That young feller was born ornery and he won’t quit so he’s better off right where he is. If I let him out, he’ll be dead within the year.”

But Rosie Lee wagered the judge he was mistaken, offering her own person as security, so he took the bet. Eddie received a suspended sentence on the condition that he quit drinking and go straight. He took a job as a railway guard, serving when needed as a deputy U.S. marshal. Eddie was always a crack shot, and in a brief gunfight in the line of duty, he killed Luke and Zeke Crittenden, halfbreed Cherokee brothers, who had resisted a routine arrest for shooting up the streets. (The Crittenden boys were also deputy marshals, having never been criminals or drunken troublemakers except in their spare time.) But Reed himself would be slain within the year under similar circumstances and so his little sister lost her bet. In arrears to the Hanging Judge and to her brother’s lawyers, the brave girl embarked upon her own career in show business. Under her professional name, Pearl Younger, she showed it all nightly at the Pea Green House in Fort Smith, a gorgeous whorehouse celebrated far and wide as The Pride and Joy of the Great American Southwest.

I’d been in prison close to a year when a work gang captain at Little Rock told me he’d sure be sorry, Ed, if Florida claimed you before you boys go out in March to bust the sod because for a horse thief you’re a good man with a spade and an inspiring example to these other criminals. When no word came from Florida I was rented for hard labor. The leg chains were unshackled and the guards rode up and down with whips and rifles. The farmers worked the gangs like beasts of burden, gave us rotten grub and very little of it. The fields were mostly in the river bottoms, with no bridge nor ferry for many, many miles, so any man who could swim to the far side would have at least one day’s head start on the guns and bloodhounds.

Worried about my family, I was desperate to escape. One fine morning I saw my chance and ran off through the cornstalks, along with a bull nigger named Frank and a scrawny halfbreed, Curly. We had a good jump before the first guard yelled and started shooting. At the river I swam underwater, kept ducking as I angled across. Halfway over, Curly took a bullet under the shoulder but his natural-born viciousness gave him a kicking spurt that carried him to where we could run in and haul him out of range.

Curly was goose-bumped blue with cold and bleeding bad, in no shape to go further. “Should of left me drown in peace,” he snarled. His eyes darted, following our expressions like a card sharp, knowing we knew he was certain to betray us as fast as they twisted that bad shoulder up behind him. Curly’s life luck had run out, with nothing good headed his way-he knew that, too. We would have to silence him, as he would have done to us without hesitation. And so he jeered at what we must be thinking, and cursed us vilely while he still had life. He wanted to provoke us, get it over quick. “Fuckin idiots,” he complained bitterly, jerking his chin toward the shouts across the river, but he meant us, too, and all of humankind while he was at it, having the freedom of nothing left to lose. That mean skunk had grit.

Out of respect for Curly’s feelings, we went off a ways while we discussed his fate, and Frank said, “Boss, we just ain’t got no choice.” I said, “All right, go to it.” I knew how hard it was sure to be without a knife or club, and I did not have the character required to hold under the river current a man who had risked his life with us only minutes before. Frank looked surprised I would admit that but he felt the same. “In front of company, too,” I added, pointing at the knot of men across the river. What we decided was, we would duck this thorny problem-leave him where he was and keep on going. And so we said sorry and so long after trading a lot of jabber about panning for gold in Oregon, which never fooled ol’ Curly for a minute.

Our first job was to hunt up two good horses and some common clothing. That afternoon we scouted a big farm, waiting till dusk for our chance to jump the homesteader when he went out back of the barn to feed his hens. That German was real happy to saddle up both of his nags and fork over his fine German revolver and canvas kit for bullet molds and powder, since we all agreed he had no further use for ’em. When Frank frowned evilly, feeling left out, the farmer asked fearfully if “your nigra” might like a packet of smoked ham with some nice cooked grits thrown in. I had to smile at that. Scowling blackly, so to speak, my partner growled, “I ain’t nobody’s nigra,” but after all the horrible grub these tight-fisted farmers had been giving us, his stomach told him to shut up, take the damn packet. “He’s his own nigra,” I advised the German, who uttered a frantic bray not much like laughter. His nerves let go on him, I reckon.

In days to come we were to learn that while attempting our escape we had been struck by bullets in the head and drowned, according to “the wounded and recaptured convict, an accomplice of Watson and the Negro.” Maybe that’s what Curly told ’em (“Breeds can’t be counted on even to lie,” Frank said), but more likely the warden was trying to make us think no one was after us while alerting lawmen all over the West. I regretted Mandy’s grief over her husband’s demise but could not help it. There was no way to get word to my family.

Having cautioned our benefactor not to leave his farm until next day lest we return in ugly mood, we rode out at nightfall toward the west, having craftily mentioned in the German’s hearing that we were off to Oregon. We lost our hoof prints in a stream, then circled out wide and crossed a pinewood before turning back east toward the Tennessee state line.