The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (8 page)

“Good morning, neighbor,” answered the young man, very friendly and open. “Heading for St. Genevieve?”

“Not till you tell us how you fared. We require to fodder up, but we was aiming to make the best bargain we could.”

“We carted in a passel of beaver pelts,” said the young man, “and they commanded a tolerable price—better than what I figured on. If you’ve got skins to trade, Ross Sylvester’s your man. He’s honest, and he pays cash.”

I didn’t think Shep would be able to keep his jaw buttoned up very long, so now he said, “There’s a fancy side-saddle for you,” and rode toward the wife to examine it. His manner was bold and yet cringy and polite, too—nothing a person could complain about, but not comfortable, either. He prodded his mare on up till its flanks rubbed against her stirrups, and laid his hand on the saddle horn, which was silver-studded, like the rest of the leather.

The young man’s face kept its friendly look, and his slouch was still easy and loose, but his eyes changed ever so slightly, becoming—I don’t know how you’d say it—
tight
-looking.

“Yes,” he said, “her uncle that was in the Texas troubles brought it back from Mexico. We’ve been offered a heap for it, but she won’t sell.”

“Well, now I don’t blame the little lady, indeed I don’t,” said Shep, grinning at her and touching the brim of his hat. “It’s just a perfect fit—very snug and firm. I don’t know when I’ve seen a better-filled saddle.”

She stared directly at him, cool and contemptuous, and showed without saying a word that she no more cared what he thought than she would a pig in a pigsty. She had pluck, and no mistake.

But he couldn’t leave it alone. He had hit on a line of palaver that suited him, and he meant to squeeze it dry. He said:

“Why, the two was made for each other; there ain’t a wrinkle anywhere.” Then, turning to the husband, he said, “How old was this uncle? If you ask me, that saddle was cut to measure, and it wasn’t done in only one fitting, neither.”

“Come on, Joyce,” said the young man shortly. “Stir up the team, Todd, we’ll be getting along.”

“Hey, now!” cried Shep in offended alarm. “That ain’t what I call neighborly. You’re a-going to hurt this old fellow’s feelings”—gesturing toward John. “He’s touchy, he is—there ain’t hardly any telling what he’s apt to do next.”

“ ‘God shall likewise destroy thee for ever, He shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the land of the living,’ ” said John, and pulling out a pistol from under his coat, he shot the young man in the middle of the forehead, the bullet making a small, neat, blue hole. I remember thinking how queer it looked without any blood whatever. Then I saw Mr. Slater’s coat coming up toward me; the tops of the trees spun around in a whirling circle, faster and faster, and everything slipped away into blackness.

When I came to, that monster was bending over the dead man, on the ground, going through his pockets. Shep had the woman by both wrists, but he was making poor shift of it, for his left cheek had four bloody scratches from eye to chin, his jacket sleeve was half torn off, and he was being kicked about the shin and knee. At the sound of the shot, the team had reared, and the boy, standing up and sawing at the reins, was trying to calm them.

“Go, Todd!” the woman cried. “Lash the mules—streak for home and fetch your Uncle Ned!”

I don’t know when I ever saw a cooler performer than that boy, even among the shantyboaters, who were a rough lot and didn’t care a fig for human life, theirs or anybody else’s. He cracked a blacksnake whip down on the team, shouted “Gee—on!” and fell backward over the wagon seat, so abruptly did the mules leap forward and yank him out of there. The twins, in the back, were screaming, but the boy, steady and white-faced, was as businesslike as if he tackled this kind of thing every day.

“After him, Shep!” the old man cried. “There’s nothing here—they’ve got their plunder in the wagon.”

With a curse, Shep dropped the woman’s arm and spurred his horse in the direction of the runaway, but he hadn’t got more than fifty yards before a shot rang out and his hat flew off like something jerked on a string. He hauled up, almost pulling the mare back on top of him, which would have been a very good thing, in my judgment.

The boy had dropped his reins and let the mules head for home
on their own. Then, lying on his stomach, he had snatched up a rifle and taken a pot shot as deliberate as a professional hunter’s, and if it hadn’t been for a bump in the road he would have bagged game, though nothing you’d care to eat or even have stuffed and hang over the fireplace. The last I saw him, disappearing into the woods, he was ramming home a charge for another try.

Shep gave out that he’d had enough. He shouted back, “Catch him yourself—I ain’t hankering to have my skull ventilated by no shirttail boy.”

It was nearly over now, but not quite. Finding herself freed, the young wife, still without tears, grabbed an ax that was slung in a pack on her husband’s horse—he’d likely been riding ahead, cutting shoots off the trail—and wheeling around sent it spinning at the old man’s head. Murrel or not, he took a lot of killing. Quick as a youngster, he rolled over and over on the ground, like a snake that’s been hit a lick with a stick, and when he came up he emptied his other pistol into the woman’s left breast. Before she slumped off her horse, I watched the red stain widen out like spring water bubbling up.

If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget that day, either the killings or what came after. When Shep got back, he and the old man checked up and found that the total haul was eight dollars silver, a couple of trumpery rings from off the woman’s fingers, and a good hunting-case watch that the young man was wearing on a braided rawhide thong.

“There was more cash than this—bound to be if they traded goods,” said John. “I’d like to get my hooks on that cotton-haired whelp.”

Shep took the boots off the dead man and said they fitted him like a glove. He tossed his, which were scuffed up and full of holes, and had a piece of bark in one for a patch, into the bushes and walked around as blown up as a peacock. You would have thought he’d been elected to Congress, he was so pleased.

John took the eight dollars, and Slater got the watch. They opened it up and it struck the hour-two cheerful little dings
as saucy as a grandfather clock—and on the inside were two pictures, one of the man and his wife at their wedding, looking happy but warm, and another of the children. The twins were mere babies, but the boy Todd had the same sober, grown-up look as when he had whipped up the mules, half an hour before.

I wondered where he was, and if he reached home. Evidently Shep had the same idea, because he said, “We’d better hump ourselves—that boy’ll be back soon, and he’ll bring help.” It was curious, but the miserable bully had got the fear of God put in him by that close ball, and now, as I write, I think he must have had a foresight that he and the boy would meet up again sometime.

But now they must dispose of the bodies—“to destroy the evidence”—for John said he had studied law in jail, along with the religion that had been his salvation and made him see how wicked he was in the old days, plotting uprisings and drinking, and he said they had to have a corpus delecty before there was any crime.

“If they find a corpus delecty in this case, they’ll have to dive for it,” he stated. “For anybody of the true girt, there was only one answer, and that’s the way we’ll do it.”

So they took a sheath knife and ripped both bodies clear down the stomachs and pulled out all the intestines, and then they filled the spaces back up with rocks and sand and dumped those two poor unhuman shells into a slough that had steep, muddy banks.

Both Shep and John were red to the elbows before they were done, but they washed up as offhand as a pair of coal miners. It was sickening, and horrible, but I’d seen so much that day, I was kind of numb, you might say.

After a while, we headed on up the trail, with no sound but the irregular clopping of the horses, and now and then Jennie crying a little. Right then, I made up my mind to get even for that boy Todd if it was the last thing I did. Still, you understand, my own case was nothing to brag about, not yet. But I was alive, and madder than a hornet, which I’ve noticed can serve as well as courage in a pinch. I had my hatchet that I’d lifted from the farmer stuck in my
belt, and I figured that when we stopped to sleep, I’d get up in the middle of the night and bash in their heads. I was just sore enough to do it. But the more I thought it over, the better it seemed to wait and work my original plan.

When we pulled up to camp, the old man said he called it about seven miles to St. Louis and that we’d ride in early in the morning to collect the reward. I wailed and took on and begged him not to do it, but he quoted four or five verses from the Bible, mostly having to do with a man named Joab, who had a fight in a tree, and told me to shut my trap.

That night, sitting around the fire, drinking “coffee” made from evans’-root, he fell to talking about the old days, and he said: “No boy ever had the advantages of upbringing that I did, and I thank God for it. A blessed mother is heaven’s earthly reward, and mine was a jewel. She was the wife of a boneheaded innkeeper, and she taught me to steal before I was ten. It was her guidance that made me rise up to success. She had the flair for hospitality, and when she tucked in a guest, she generally bottom-warmed his bed, to be sure he’d sleep, and then I would prize my way in and empty his pockets. She gave me my start, you might say.

“At the height of my nigger-stealing I was that genteel you wouldn’t have recognized me. I bought my boots and hats in Philadelphia and had my clothes tailored in New Orleans, meanwhile laying over at Mother Surgick’s to frolic with the girls. My pantaloons were strapped on, top and bottom, and my shirt was fastened with ribbons and buttons of gold. I had a silk hat with a rim three quarters of an inch wide and boots of pure calf on my feet. And if it ain’t too much for your stomick, have a look at me now.”

Leaning forward, he seized a brand and stirred up the fire, and in the upward shower of sparks he looked as pious as old Moses himself, with his white hair flying and his eyes crazy and hot. I could see Shep glance at Slater, who was gazing broodily at the embers, and then at the girl, who sat as white and still as death. “Yes, sir,” said John, “I was a roarer, born and bred, and I flung money both to the right and to the left—I was famous for it. There wasn’t
hardly a law I didn’t break, from murder to treason, and do you know what first laid me low?”

He began to rip and rave and foam and grit his teeth and haul at his hair till I thought he’d tumble over into the fire.

“—why, they took me up for horse-stealing, like a common beggarman in the street, me that was plotting to rule an empire. They sentenced me to twelve months in jail, gave me thirty lashes on my bare back at a public whipping post, made me sit two hours in the pillory three days running, and at the end of the third day brought me into court and branded my left thumb with the letters ‘H.T.’ for Horse Thief.”

Leaping to his feet, he flourished the thumb with a shriek that made the woods ring. Both Shep and Slater jumped back out of the way, and the girl woke up with a whimper.

So it was true, then. The mark, now fine white lines, showed up clear against the dark grime and broken nail of his thumb, and I fancied I could see dried crusts of blood from his work earlier in the day. He
was
Murrel, just as he’d said all along, and here I was stuck with him. Shep and Slater must have had something like the same idea, for they stood back staring, as sober as gallows birds facing the noose.

“All right, John, all right,” said Shep nervously. “That’s over and done, so why don’t you turn in and get some sleep? Another screech like that and you’ll have half of St. Louis on our necks.”

“They strapped my hand to the railing at the judge’s bench, and brought in a tinner’s stove and set it beside the sheriff. Then he took up the red-hot branding iron and placed it against my thumb. Some people in the back of the room—they came and thanked me later for the entertainment—said they could hear the sizzle of meat frying and see the smoke plumes three or four feet in the air. And I never twitched a muscle. Men came up and shook my hand afterwards; they said it was the finest display of gall they’d seen in the history of Nashville court punishment.”

“Sure, John, sure, John,” said Shep, who was getting back some
of his impudence. “There never was anybody like you for a thumb roasting—we all know that.”

The old man didn’t heed him but kept on with an account of how that was nothing, that two of his confederates who were nabbed later, at the time of his long prison term for conspiracy, were stripped, lashed all over with nettles, tied face up naked in a skiff and set adrift for the flies to finish the job. Speaking for myself, I’d heard enough, so I crept back out of sight and pulled my blanket up over my ears. But I wasn’t easy in my mind. Through the covering I could hear the droning of the madman’s voice, and occasionally the fire popping, and once, after I’d been asleep, I reckon, I sat up sharp with my heart in my mouth. But it was only a hoot owl or a bear—it’s curious how much alike they can sound, it takes a real old woods rat to tell them apart—and I lay back down, very quiet. John still sat by the fire, bending over and moaning with his head between his knees, and the others were sleeping nearby. I could have split his skull easy with the hatchet, but no, I thought I’d wait for the morning. They’d earned that reward in St. Louis, and I wanted to be there when they got it.

We were up before dawn, mostly because it was too cold to sleep. The fire had gone out, and the horses were stamping around, noisy and restless. There
had
been a bear in the woods during the night, and nothing else I know of will give a horse the jimjams quite as fast, Bears will attack a horse, if they’re feeling ornery enough. Years afterward, I met a man who’d been all around, in India and Africa and run-down places like that, and he’d had a lot to do with lions and tigers, but he said he’d rather tackle them any day than run foul of a bear in a grouchy humor, which is their natural outlook.