Desperadoes

I sat down on the porch under its tin awning while the other four in the gang walked across Union Street, Bob whispering names and instructions in a voice so low I couldn’t hear him three feet away. I read that the facade of the bank was designed by Mesker Brothers of St. Louis in 1887. The red bricks between my boots were manufactured by the Coffeyville Vitrified Brick and Tile Company, no date. Left across Union Street and hardly a spit away from the Condon’s southeast door was the plate glass window of its rival bank, the smaller First National, which Bob and I would take.

It would happen this way. The Dalton gang would ride in on Eighth Street, park in front of the Opera House, split up to pilfer the banks. We’d return to the animals and cover the exit of whoever was last out and fire some shots to stall a commotion. We’d haul east on Eighth for our getaway, horseshoes sparking on the bricks, and turn south on the dirt road behind the stores, galloping next to the Santa Fe tracks to Elmwood Cemetery where Eugenia would pick us up. Then we’d meet black Amos Burton in a schooner wagon of cotton bales, hiding under them until we got to the Missouri River where we’d board a riverboat south and then a transatlantic steamer.

The two banks did not seem difficult at the time.

I kept a lookout in that midnight town while Broadwell and Powers hunched over to peer at the walnut counters of the First National, while Bob delivered lessons. I saw Grat sag against the doorjamb and stare across the plaza to the Lang & Lape Furniture Dealers and Undertakers parlor which was next to Slosson’s drugstore. Slosson sold medicinal liquor. That must’ve given my boozy brother the notion. I saw him spit tobacco juice between his teeth and amble south along the boardwalk past the Isham Brothers and Mansur hardware store next door to the bank, then past McDermott’s millinery, Smith’s barbershop, Boothby’s drugstore, and Barndollar’s Dry Goods and Sundries store, where he turned the corner and I lost him.

I learned secondhand that Grat stepped over the white picket fence to the yard of a house owned by Mr. Benson of the Slosson store. Grat kicked at the storm door panel until Benson opened up, and the man was so terror-struck at seeing a Dalton that he later claimed Grat was Bob, and it’s been handed down that way ever since. He even invented two pearl-handled revolvers and swore the ruffian demanded a bottle of Austin Nichols Wild Turkey, a probability. Benson alibied pretty good, however, saying Slosson’s store hadn’t traded in whiskey since the Populists were elected, so Grat stayed thirsty, and he was fuming by the horses when four of the dangerous-looking Dalton gang finally returned to the Opera House.

Our horses were standing asleep at the hitching rail and Grat was watching a jet of tobacco juice squirm down the Opera House window glass. Grat said, ‘By morning this whole town’s gonna know we been here. So don’t count on no big surprise.’

Bob unwrapped his reins from the rail. ‘How will they know?’

Grat decided not to answer. He slipped his stirrup over his boot and jerked his horse around so hard getting on that the whites showed in its eyes.

Bob asked, ‘How?’ again, and his thirty-one-year-old brother slumped in his saddle, smiling with brown teeth. Grat said, ‘I peed my name against a door.’

That morning Marshal Jacob Yoes and Deputy Marshal Chris Madsen were sent telegrams about us from City Marshal Charles T. Connelly. And the five of us slept on the autumn-cold earth beside the Caney River. I woke up with a backache and I did nothing all day but watch a woman and two small children dressed in brown walk slowly through the afternoon, shucking corn from the husks. The woman had water in a goatskin. She shaded her eyes once and she must’ve seen us, but she just picked up her bushel basket and lugged it toward the barn.

I danced around in the muck of a smarting-cold river, washing with laundry soap; then shaved and dressed in a black wool suit and practiced my speech with Bob. Then he and I stood on the porch of the Texas Johnson farmhouse with the sun going down red in his cherry trees. I had rose oil in my hair and a borrowed white hat in my hand and my brother had brushed down my clothes with a straw broom. Julia pushed open the screen and she flustered with the surprise of our visit and poured tea and sugar into two glasses. Bob carried his out to the backyard garden where he sat with a frightened Mrs. Johnson on a peach tree seat and was as pleasant as a seminarian.

Julia and I sat across from each other in the front room, drinking tea and eating gingersnaps. She’d changed into a blue gingham dress with puffs and bows and her long black hair was coiled and twisted with ribbons. She’d rouged her cheeks with the stain of artificial geraniums and she’d powdered her dark skin with cornstarch.

I stared at the labels of canned goods and coffee packages they’d tacked up on the walls as decorative art—the practice in those days. On the front of a package of clothing starch was a pinafored girl on a swing. I told Julia she looked pretty as that.

She blushed at her shoes, then put her glass down on a doily and asked, ‘Would you like me to play some music?’

I said I would and she moved to the piano bench and I listened with my finger at my temple as she played ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘Washed in the Blood of the Lamb,’ and ‘Jesus, Help Me to Remember.’

I said, ‘What’s that one they call “Here Comes the Bride”?’

She kept her back to me and turned the page of a music sheet. ‘That’s not the name of it.’

I said, ‘Why don’t you play that?’

She got up from the bench, smiling ever so gaily at her guest. ‘My fingers are getting tired.’

She had a white kitten that she put pendant earrings on. It clawed at my pants leg and nipped my knuckles and the jewelry waggled from its ears and we spent more time than necessary being amused. Then the kitten got bored with the taste of my fingers and pawed at something under the piano and I said, ‘I’m supposed to ask you to go with Amos Burton in a schooner and meet Bob and Eugenia and me, thence to Joplin and a boat south, posing as immigrants.’

I think she listened twice to every word. Her face was pained and touched and worried and in love, all at once.

I said, ‘I’m supposed to ask you to elope.’

She shook her head. ‘But you’re not going to ask me that, are you. You won’t want to hear me say no to you so you won’t even venture the question.’

I don’t know what I did then. Maybe I was nervous with my hands. I said, ‘No. I reckon I’ll be too flummoxed and shy.’

We walked outside and she sat in the swing and we were quiet together for a long time, watching clouds devour and relinquish the moon. I said, ‘I never wanted it to happen this way. I wanted to stop it a long time ago. I guess one thing just led to another. It’s like I fell into a river.’ I threw a stick. ‘That sounds stupid, doesn’t it.’

She leaned on the ropes of the swing. ‘No. I suppose that’s exactly what it is like.’

‘I’m twenty years old, Julia. I got everything still in front of me. There’s a little something I have to do yet, but then I’m going to say good-bye to the past and start my life all over again. And it would truly choke me up if you’d consent to be my company. You don’t have to say anything now. You can just send one word to the telegraph office in Joplin: Yes or No; that’s it.’

We strolled around to the backyard where one of the boarders sat with Mrs. Johnson and Bob was smelling the Sweet William while they talked about the water on the moon. I shook hands with Julia’s mother but I was sour-faced over my smile, and the man who called her Daughter glowered with suspicion as Julia linked her arm with mine and walked me slowly to my horse. I kissed her cheek and she hugged me and cried into my coat, ‘I don’t want you to leave.’

I didn’t say anything more. I just petted her hair until my brother came up, and then I rode off with him, pushing the animals pretty hard. Then we let them tarry on the road but I still didn’t say diddily-poop to my brother Bob who always got what he wanted. He knew what there was to be quiet about but he said at last, ‘How was it?’

‘She fixed it all right,’ I said.