The Outlaw Josey Wales (2 page)

“Air ye’ goin’, Josey?” he asked.

There was a long silence. Josey Wales did not lift his eyes from the fire. “I reckin not,” he said.

Dave Pool turned his horse. “Good luck, Josey,” he called and lifted his hand in half salute.

Other hands were lifted, and the calls of “’Luck” drifted back … and they were gone.

All except one. After a long moment the rider slowly walked his horse into the circle of firelight. Young Jamie Burns stepped from his mount and looked across the fire at Josey. “Why, Josey? Why don’t ye go?”

Josey looked at the boy. Eighteen years old, rail-thin, with hollowed cheeks and blond hair that spilled to his shoulders beneath the slouch hat. “Ye’d best make haste and ketch up with ’em, boy,” Josey said, almost tenderly. “A lone rider won’t never make it.”

The boy smoothed the ground with a toe of his heavy boot. “I’ve rid with ye near ’bout two year now, Josey … he paused, “I was … jest wonderin’ why.”

Josey stood and walked to the fire, leading his horse. He gazed intently into the flames. “Well,” he said quietly, “I jest cain’t … anyhow, there ain’t nowheres to go-”

If Josey Wales had understood all the reasons, which he did not, he still could not have explained them to the boy. There was, in truth, no place for Josey Wales to go. The fierce mountain clan code would have deemed it a sin for him to take up life. His loyalty was there, in the grave with his wife and baby. His obligation was to the feud. And despite the cool cunning he had learned, the animal quickness and the deliberate arts of killing with pistol and knife, beneath it all there still rose the black rage of the mountain man. His family had been wronged. His wife and boy murdered. No people, no government, no king, could ever repay. He did not think these thoughts. He only felt the feeling of generations of the code handed down from the Welsh and Scot clans and burned into his being. If there was nowhere to go, it did not mean emptiness in the life of Josey Wales. That emptiness was filled with a cold hatred and a bitterness that showed when his black eyes turned mean.

Jamie Burns sat down on a log. “I ain’t got nowheres. to go neither,” he said.

A mockingbird suddenly set up song from a honeysuckle vine. A wood thrush chuckled for night nesting.

“Have ye got a chaw?” Jamie asked.

Josey pulled a green-black twist from his pocket and handed it across the fire. The man and the boy were partners.

Chapter 3

Josey Wales and Jamie Burns “took to the brush.” The following month Jesse James tried to surrender under a flag of truce and was shot through the lungs, barely escaping. When the news reached Josey his opinion of the enemy’s treachery was reinforced, and he smiled coldly as he gave Jamie the news, “I could’ve told little Dingus,” he said.
(Editor’s note: “Dingus was the nickname given to Jesse James by his comrades)

There were others like them. In February, 1866, Josey and Jamie joined Bud and Donnie Pence, Jim Wilkerson, Frank Gregg, and Oliver Shephard in a daylight robbery of the Clay County Savings Bank at Liberty. Outlawry exploded over Missouri. A Missouri Pacific train was held up at Otterville. Federal Troops were reinforced, and the Governor ordered out militia and cavalry.

But now the old haunts were gone. Twice they barely escaped capture or death through betrayal. The riding was growing more treacherous. They began to talk of Texas. Josey had ridden the trail five times, but Jamie had never. As fall brought its golden haze of melancholy to the Ozarks and the hint of cold wind from the north, Josey announced to the boy over a morning campfire, “After Lexington we’re goin’ to Texas.” The bank at Lexington was a legitimate “target” for guerrillas. “Carpetbag bank, Yank Army payroll,” Josey said. But they had gone against the rules, without a third man outside of the bank.

Jamie, with his flat gray eyes, coolly manned the door while Josey took the payroll. They had hit, guerrilla-style, bold and open, in the afternoon. When they came out, jerking the slipknot of their reins from the hitch rack, it was Jamie first up and riding his little mare. As Josey jerked his reins loose he had dropped the money bag, and as he stooped to retrieve it the reins had slipped from his hand. At that moment a shot rang out from the bank. The big roan had bolted, and Josey, instead of chasing the horse, had crouched, the money bag at his feet, and with a Colts’ .44 in each hand poured a staccato roar of gunfire at the bank. He would have died there, for his instinct was not that of the criminal to run and save his loot, but that of the guerrilla, to turn on his hated enemies.

As people crowded out of the stores and blue uniforms poured out of the courthouse, Jamie whirled his horse and drummed back up the street, the little mare stretching out. He grabbed the trailing reins of the roan and while Josey turned the big .44’s toward the scattering crowd he calmly led the roan at a canter back to the lone figure in the street.

Josey had holstered his pistols, grabbed up the bag, and swung on the horse Indian-fashion as it broke into a dead run. Down the street they had come, the horses side by side, straight at the blue uniforms. The soldiers scattered, but as the horses came near to a scope of woods just ahead, the soldiers, kneeling, opened up with carbines. Josey heard the hard splat of the bullet and brought the big roan close to Jamie… or the boy would have fallen from the saddle.

Josey slowed the horses, holding the arm of Jamie as they came down into the brakes of the Missouri River. Turning northeast along the river, Josey brought the horses to a walk in the heavy willow growth and finally halted them. Far off in the distance he could hear men shouting back and forth as they worked their way into the brakes.

Jamie Burns had been hit hard. Josey swung down from his horse and lifted the jacket of the boy. The heavy rifle slug had entered his back, just missing the spine, but had emerged through his lower chest. Dark blood was caked over his trousers and saddle, and lighter blood still spurted from his wound. Jamie gripped the saddle horn with both hands.

“It’s right bad, ain’t it, Josey?” he asked with surprising calm.

Josey’s answer was a quick nod as he pulled two shirts from Jamie’s saddlebags and tore them into strips. He worked quickly making heavy pads and placed them on the open wounds, front and back, and then wound the stripping tightly around the boy. As Josey finished his work Jamie looked down at him from beneath the old slouch hat.

“I ain’t gittin’ off this hoss, Josey. I kin make it. Me and you seen fellers in lot worse shape make it, ain’t we, Josey?”

Josey rested his hand over the tightly gripped hands of the boy. He made the gesture in a rough, careless way… but Jamie felt the meaning. “Thet we have, Jamie,” Josey looked steadily up at him, “and we’ll make it by a long-tailed mile.”

The sounds of horses breaking willows made Josey swing up on his horse. He turned in his saddle and said quietly to Jamie, “Jest hold on and let thet little mare follow me.”

“Where to?” Jamie whispered.

A rare smile crossed the scarred face of the outlaw.

“Why, we’re goin’ where all good brush fighters go… where we ain’t expected,” he drawled. “We’re doubling back to Lexington, nat’uly.”

The dusk of evening was bringing on a quick darkness as they came out of the brakes. Josey set their course a few hundred yards north of the trail they had taken out of town, but angling so that it appeared they were headed for Lexington, though their direction would take them slightly north of the settlement. He never broke the horses into a trot but kept them walking steadily. The sounds of the shouting men on the river bank grew fainter and were finally lost behind them.

Josey knew the posse of militia and cavalry were searching for their crossing of the Missouri River. He pulled his horse back alongside the mare. Jamie’s mouth was set in a grim line of pain, but he appeared steady in the saddle.

“Thet posse figures us fer Clay County,” Josey said, “where little Dingus and Frank is stompin’ around at.”

Jamie tried to speak, but a quick jolt of pain cut his breath into a half shriek. He nodded his head that he understood.

As they rode, Josey reloaded the Colts and checked the loads of the two pistols in his saddle holsters. With quick glances over his shoulder, he betrayed his anxiety for Jamie. Once, with the icy calm of the seasoned guerrilla, he held the horses on a wooded knoll while a score of possemen galloped past on their way to the river. Even as the horses thundered close, not fifty yards from their concealment, Josey was down off his mount and checking the bandages under Jamie’s shirt.

“Look down at me, boy,” he said. “Iff’n you look at ’em they might git a feelin’.”

There was dried blood on the tight bandages, and Josey grunted with satisfaction. “We’re in good shape, Jamie. The bleeding has stopped.”

Josey swung aboard the roan and clucked the horses forward. He turned in the saddle to Jamie, “We’ll jest keep walkin’ ’til we walk slap out of Missouri.”

The lights of Lexington showed on their right and then slowly receded behind them. West of Lexington there were Kansas City and Fort Leavenworth with a large contingent of soldiers; Richmond was north with a cavalry detachment of Missouri Militia; to the east were Fayette and Glasgow with more cavalry. Josey turned the horses south. All the way to the Blackwater River there was nothing except scattered farms. True, Warrensburg was just across the river, but first they had to put miles between themselves and Lexington.

Boldly, Josey turned onto the Warrensburg road. He pulled the mare up beside him, for he knew that Jamie was weakening and he feared the boy would fall from his horse. The hours and miles fell behind them. The road, though dangerous to travel, presented no obstacles to the horses, and the tough animals were accustomed to long forced marches.

As the first gray light streaked the clouds to the east, Josey jerked the horses to a standstill. For a moment he sat, listening. “Riders,” he said tersely, “coming from behind us.” Quickly he pulled the horses off the road and had barely made the heavy brush when a large group of blue-clad riders swept past them. Jamie sat erect in the saddle and watched with burning eyes. The drawn, tight lines of his face showed that only the pain had kept him conscious.

“Josey, them fellers ride like the Second Colorado.” “Well,” Josey drawled, “yore eyes is fine Them boys is right pert fighters, but they couldn’t track a litter of pigs ’crost a kitchen floor.” He searched the boy’s face as he spoke and was rewarded with a tight grin. “But,” he added, “jest in case they can, we’re leavin’ the road. That line of woods means the Blackwater, and we’re goin’ to take a rest.”

As he spoke, Josey turned the horses toward the river. With a casual joke he had hidden from the boy their alarming position. One look at Jamie in the light showed his weakness. He had to have rest, if nothing more. The horses were too tired to run if they were jumped, and the appearance of soldiers from the north meant the alarm was to be spread south. They figured him for heading to the Nations. This time they figured him right.

Chapter 4

The heavy timbered approaches to the Blackwater afforded a welcome refuge from the open rolling prairie over which they had come. Josey found a shallow stream that ran toward the river and guided the horses down it, knee-deep in water. Fifty yards back from the sluggish Blackwater he brought the horses up the bank of the stream and pushed through heavy sumac vines until he found a small glade sunken between banks lined with elm and gum trees. He helped Jamie from the saddle, but the boy’s legs buckled under him. Josey carried him in his arms to a place where the bank overhung the glade. There he lay blankets and stretched Jamie out on his back. He pulled the saddles from the horses and picketed them with lariats on the lush grass of the marshy ravine. When he returned, Jamie was sleeping, his face flushed with the beginning of fever.

It was high noon when Jamie wakened. The pain washed over him in heavy throbs that tore at his chest. He saw Josey hunched over a tiny fire, feeding the fire with one hand as he maneuvered a heavy tin cup over the flame with the other. Seeing Jamie awake, he came to him with the cup, and cradling the boy’s head in his arms, he pressed the cup to his lips. “A little Tennessee rifle-ball tonic, Jamie,” he said.

Jamie swallowed and coughed, “Tastes like you made it with rifle balls,” and he managed a weak grin.

Josey tilted more of the hot liquid down his throat. “Sass’fras and iron root, with a dab of side meat… we ain’t got no beef,” he said and eased the boy’s head back on the blanket. “Yonder, in Tennessee, every time there was a shootin’ scrape, Granma commenced to boil up tonic. She’d send me to the hollers to dig sass’fras and iron root. Reckin I dug enough roots to loosen all the ground in Carter County. Re’clect that oncet Pa been coughin’ fit to kill fer a month of Sundays. Everybody said as how he had lung fever. Gran’ma commenced to feedin’ him tonic ever’ mornin’. Then one night Pa had a fit of coughin’ and spit up a rifle ball on the pillarcase … next mornin’ he felt goodern’ a boar hawg chasin’ a sow. Gran’ma said was the tonic done it.”

Jamie’s eyes closed, and he breathed with heavy, broken rhythm. Josey eased the tangled blond head down on the blanket. For the first time he noticed the long, almost girlish eyelashes, the smooth face.

“Grit an’ sand, by God,” he muttered. There was tenderness in the gesture as he smoothed the tousled hair with a rough hand. Josey sat back on his heels and looked thoughtfully into the cup. He frowned. The liquid was pink … blood, lung blood.

Josey watched the horses cropping grass without seeing them. He was thinking of Jamie. Too many times, in a hundred fights, he had seen men choke on their blood from pierced lungs. The nearest help was the Nations. He had been through the Cherokee’s land several times on the trail to Texas and back. Once he had met General Stand Watie, the Cherokee General of the Confederacy. He knew many of the warriors well and once had joined with them as outriders to General Jo Shelby’s Cavalry when Shelby raided north along the Kansas Border. The bone-handled knife that protruded from the top of his left boot had been given him by the Cherokee. On its handle was inscribed the Wanton mark that only proven braves could wear. He trusted the Cherokee, and he trusted his medicine.