Northfield (18 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-O
NE
W
ILLIAM
W
ALLACE
M
URPHY

“If any of you jackasses fire again, I’ll shoot you myself!” I yelled, and, ripping off my bowler and turning in disgust, I screamed at the men behind me, the cowardly bastards who lacked courage to walk into this thicket with me and these six others. Yet one of them had shot down a young man while he was trying to surrender.

“Who fired that shot? Damn it, I said who fired?”

“I did, Captain Murphy.” I could just hear him from the bluff. He waved his straw hat like a fool. “Me. Willis Bundy. I didn’t know___”

“Put your rifle down, Bundy! I might have you hanged.…”

“He’s alive, Cap,” James Glispin said, and I swallowed down the bile, and approached the bandit Bundy had shot down. Shock masked his face, drained of all color, and he just sat there, holding the side of his chest where Bundy’s round had hit him. Well, even outlaws have their angels, for the wound did not appear mortal.

“I was surrendering,” he said, his voice a stunned whisper. “Somebody shot me while I was surrendering.”

I nodded, but had no remorse for this boy, no matter what threats I had hurled at Willis Bundy. He had been shot while surrendering. So be it. What of those two dead men, unarmed men, buried now in Northfield?

I have no tolerance for lawbreakers, whether they are damned secessionists in Virginia or claim-jumpers in California. I have fought them all.

In Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania I was born, of sound Scot and Dutch stock, but took off for the California gold fields after turning sixteen. Nigh seven years I spent there, and, while I never made it rich, well not as rich as some, I did learn some important lessons. Such as how do deal with vermin. You exterminate them.

By the spring of ’61, I had returned to Pennsylvania, making my home now in Pittsburgh, and, when the call came for volunteers to save the Union, I raised a company for the 14
^th
Pennsylvania and entered the war.

I had the honor of serving under General Phil Sheridan, the honor of receiving wounds from Rebel sabers and muskets, at Lexington and Piedmont, and the dishonor of spending three and a half months in the miserable confines of Libby Prison after being captured at Mimms Flat. I despised being out of the fight, but that brief period in that horrible dungeon taught me another important lesson about vermin. Fellow officers wouldn’t let me exterminate the traitors amongst us, but we could brand those callous fiends, and that we did, carving at on their turncoat foreheads.

Freed from prison after the surrender of General Lee—they should have hanged him, too, and Jefferson Davis and all those mutineers, seditionists—I had hoped to continue the fight in Texas, where Company D was ordered, but, alas, the Rebs there surrendered while we marched to Fort Leaven-worth in Kansas. Deprived of further glory, one good thing came out of the march. In Kansas I met my lovely bride, Inez, married her, and moved here to Madelia after being mustered out of the service of my country.

Since then, my fights had been confined to the state legislature, to which I had been elected in ’71, but when I by chance found Sheriff Glispin in need of volunteers to track down and capture the Northfield plunderers, I was more than ready.

It is little wonder that I took command when we had our prey snared. The only thing that surprised me was the fact that only six, and not all, of my troops had the courage to march against brigands with me, and that one had the audacity to shoot a man while he showed the flag of truce.

So be it.

“I think you’ll live,” I told the boy, then took in the scene of battle. Three bodies lay spread in the thick brush, their bodies riddled with bullets, and relief washed over my face at the sight of the six members of my volunteers standing before me.

“Is anyone injured?” I inquired.

Colonel Vought let out a nervous little laugh, reached into his vest pocket, and withdrew a chunk of his large rosewood pipe, now shattered by a ball. “I found the piece of lead in my cartridge belt,” he said, shaking his head.

“God looks after you,” I told him.

Vought said nothing, looking away as if ashamed. ’Twas a good thing he had not been smoking the pipe, else the bullet might have killed him.

“You ought to have a watch fob made out of that,” Ben Rice said, “for luck.”

The colonel’s head bobbed fretfully. He shuffled his feet.

“You’re bleeding,” I told George Bradford, who clutched his wrist.

“Scratch is all, Cap,” Bradford told me. “Ruint my aim, though. I’ll be fine.”

Yes, I thought, God has looked after us all.

“Come in!” I shouted to the rest of the posse. By now the slough was surrounded by scores upon scores of men who had taken up arms to rid this county of vermin, or men who’d come along as damnable tourists, hoping to pick up souvenirs and touch the bodies of the dead. “It’s all over!” I cared not a whit to be in the company of cowards, but I needed pallbearers for the slain and Doc Overholt to tend to Bradford’s scratch and the living border man’s mangled arm and other wounds.

“Come in! The bandits are all dead, except one, and he has surrendered and is wounded!”

As soon as I had spoken those words, one of the outlaws I thought dead climbed to his feet, and I swear Big Jim Severson leaped as if he had stepped on a nest of rattlers or seen a ghost.

“Cole!” the young outlaw beside me said, and rushed toward the man I now knew must be the nefarious Cole Younger of Missouri. The reports had not been in err. The James and Younger brothers had been the bushwhackers behind the North-field raid.

“Come on, you Yankee sons-of-bitches,” the gravely wounded Cole Younger said, his voice slurred but his spirit strong. He spit out blood, mouth frothing like a hydrophoby wolf. Blood leaked from his nose and countless other wounds. “I’ll fight your two best men at the same time. I can lick all you sons-of-bitches.”

Waving a little pocket pistol in his right hand, one I knew was empty, having heard the metallic
clicks
as he pulled the trigger before we downed this haughty lion, Cole Younger kept on challenging us.

“Cole,” the other one said. “It’s me, Bob. Come on, Cole. Come on. Come, or we’ll all be hanged.”

“Let’m hang me. Let’m try!” He coughed, spit out more blood and saliva, and the slim one threw his brother’s arm over his chest and helped lead him toward me. “I’d as soon be hung today as tomorrow,” Cole Younger said. “Come on….”

They collapsed in a little sinkhole, and young Bob examined his brother’s wounds.

Cole Younger had been hit several times by buckshot and ball, including a slug that had slammed into his head, swelling one eye shut. Yet his brain must have cleared, because he let out a little sigh, and realized the fight had ended, that he, as all outlaws must eventually realize, had lost to the arm of the law, the arm of righteousness.

Answered, I thought with pride, to Cap Murphy’s law.

Studying the rimfire pistol as if it were foreign to him, Cole Younger suddenly grinned—how a man like that, in that condition, can grin is foreign to me—and whirled it around, offering it, butt forward, to Sheriff Glispin.

“Sheriff, I had the sure bead on you, but you was too quick for me. You’re Irish for sure. It’s all right.” I think he addressed the last sentence to his brother Bob.

Seconds later, to my surprise, another man rose from the dead, his mouth shot to pieces. He said nothing. I don’t think he could say anything in his condition, but he pitched a pair of revolvers at my Ben Rice’s feet, and staggered over to his comrades, collapsing beside them, conscious, but dazed, his eyes showing shock.

“Oh, Jim, damn it, Jim,” Bob said. “This is all my fault. I’m sorry, Jim. I’m sorry, Cole.”

“It’s all right,” Cole Younger repeated. “We’re all right.”

“Boys,” I told the bandits, “this is horrible, but you see what lawlessness has brought to you.”

I accepted an ivory-handled Smith & Wesson that Jim Severson offered me, my spoil of war, and found my bowler, which I placed on my head, then spied the last remaining outlaw. George Bradford and Charles Pomeroy stood over him.

“This one isn’t another Lazarus,” Mr. Pomeroy said, and kicked over the dead man.

He was a brutal-looking man, sightless eyes staring at the sky, a bullet through his heart and other buckshot and balls having penetrated his worthless, now lifeless body.

“Take him to the wagon,” I said, then thought better of it, remembering my intention. “No, have Willis Bundy and one of those other shirkers do it when they reach us.”

With that, I returned to the three surviving bandits, where Colonel Vought had knelt. Cole Younger looked at the Madelia hotel entrepreneur and, smiling, offered a bloody hand. “Hello, landlord,” Cole Younger said, and Vought shook the outlaw’s hand, before rising, and removing his hat.

“You know him, Colonel?” I asked.

“I knew him as J.C. King,” Vought replied softly. “The dead one over there called himself Ladd, Jack Ladd. They spent a night at my hotel a few days before the robbery. I became suspicious after learning of what had happened in Northfield. Now, I see my suspicions were not unfounded.” Next, Colonel Vought pulled out his broken pipe, showing it to Cole Younger, and fingered the bent lead bullet that had lodged in his shell belt.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, landlord,” Cole Younger told him.

“I might desire to speak of this with you later, in private,” Vought said, and I had no idea what they were talking about—none of my business—but I suspected that had been an interesting night at the Flanders Hotel.

“Certainly,” Cole Younger said, “if we ain’t hanged by then.”

“That bastard has the right idea,” someone said, revealing that the scavengers had joined us. “Let’s string up all of them now, Cap. Let’s get it done, Sheriff!”

“Yeah. Remember what they done in North-field!”

“Hang the sons-of-bitches!”

It did not matter to me if we hanged them now, and I had no intention of stopping them, for I am not the sheriff, merely a volunteer citizen, but Sheriff Glispin whirled, and sent a round from his Henry rifle into the air.

“Next one of ye yellow bastards who I even think is considering a lynching, I’ll tear ye faces apart with me fists. To Madelia we’ll be taking these laddies, and taking them in alive. Now let us get them in the wagon.”

I led the way out of Hanska Slough, my six brave comrades helping the badly wounded Younger brothers to the wagon, for Sheriff Glispin had countermanded my order, the one I had never verbally given, except to Rice and Pomeroy So be it. Perhaps the Irishman was right. The Youngers were brave men and, though outlaws and vermin, deserved better treatment than being manhandled by shirkers and craven cowards. The rest of the sightseers, cowards, and gawkers scoured the earth for trinkets, shell casings and such. It disgusted me, disgusted Sheriff Glispin even more.

I figured we’d load the Youngers in my wagon, but a farmer had a larger one, so we selected it. Bob Younger asked for a chaw of tobacco, something to help him fight the pain, and the Sorbel boy borrowed one off Oke Wisty and took it to the broken-armed bandit. Wiry little fellow had a big mouth, or a bigger pain, I suspect, and he took about half of the ten-cent plug in one bite. When he offered it back to the Sorbel boy the kid told him to keep it, and walked away.

As I returned to my buggy, something moved underneath the blankets in the back, and, to my horror, Ralph, my seven-year-old boy, poked his head out. Dropping my rifle in the mud, I raced to him, pulled him out of the wagon, demanding to know what he thought he was doing and why he wasn’t at the Flanders Hotel back in town.

During all the commotion after hearing the Sorbel kid’s sighting of the bandits, I had not laid eyes on Ralph. All that time, he had been hiding behind me. I had put him in harm’s way, without my knowledge. His mother would tan both of our hides when he returned home.

“I wanted to watch, Papa,” Ralph said, and I pulled him close to my chest, and felt myself trembling all over.

I don’t think I stopped shaking till we reached the outskirts of town.

The Youngers were wretched creatures. Doc Over-holt counted five wounds in Jim Younger, the gravest being the wound through his mouth that had knocked out half his teeth and bled furiously. Their ruined boots were wrapped with foul linen, and, when Overholt unwrapped the layers over Cole Younger’s feet, the bandit’s toenails fell off.

Word spread like fire that we had captured the bandits, and farmers, friends, and townsmen came out to greet us as we rode to Madelia. Ladies gave handkerchiefs to the outlaws to cover their grisly wounds, and, as we rode into Madelia, a great cheer erupted from the lines of people, citizens and soldiers.

Despite eleven wounds, Cole Younger, ever the showman, pushed himself to his feet and tipped his hat to the crowd, then sank back down.

“What nerve,” Charles Pomeroy’s brother said in admiration. “That fellow can take it on the chin and still smile.”

Nerve. Indeed. But how misplaced.

Not everyone agreed with Pomeroy Once we stopped at Colonel Vought’s hotel on Buck Street, and began escorting the wounded desperadoes inside, a Mankato banker—his name escapes me—rushed to Cole Younger, grabbed the man’s bloody shirtfront, and spat out: “You and all these others are a despicable gang and a disgrace to our country!”

“Who the hell are you?” Cole Younger asked. Upon hearing the banker’s answer, the outlaw grinned. “You know the difference between us? he asked, but, before the angry townsman could reply, Younger added: “You rob the poor, and I rob the rich.”

With that, Rice and Vought led the outlaw into the hotel.

We put them on the second floor, keeping many guards at the doors and windows, allowing our physicians to tend their wounds, while ladies after ladies brought the bad men clean clothes and blankets and food and milk, even brandy. Even Guri Sorbel, mother of the Sorbel kid who had alerted us, sent flowers to the killers. Other gawkers came to get a gander at the Younger brothers. Colonel Vought should have charged admission. I remember hearing that that photographer in Northfield who had taken photos of the two dead outlaws there was selling his photos at $2 a dozen. It wouldn’t be long, I figured, till another photographer came to Madelia.