True Grit (23 page)

Younger spoke fondly of him. "We had some lively times," was one thing he said. I thanked the courteous old outlaw for his help and said to James, "Keep your seat, trash!" and took my leave. They think now it was Frank James who shot the bank officer in Northfield. As far as I know that scoundrel never spent a night in jail, and there was Cole Younger locked away twenty-five years in the Minnesota pen.

I did not stay for the show as I guessed it would be dusty and silly like all circuses. People grumbled about it when it was over, saying James did nothing more than wave his hat to the crowd, and that Younger did even less, it being a condition of his parole that he not exhibit himself. Little Frank took his two boys to see it and they enjoyed the horses.

I had Rooster's body removed to Dardanelle on the train. The railroads do not like to carry disinterred bodies in the summertime but I got around paying the premium rate by having my correspondent bank in Memphis work the deed from that end through a grocery wholesaler that did a volume freight business. He was reburied in our family plot. Rooster had a little C.S.A. headstone coming to him but it was so small that I put up another one beside it, a sixty-five-dollar slab of Batesville marble inscribed

REUBEN COGBURN
1835-1903 A RESOLUTE OFFICER OF PARKER'S COURT

People here in Dardanelle and Russellville said, well, she hardly knew the man but it is just like a cranky old maid to do a "stunt" like that. I know what they said even if they would not say it to my face. People love to talk. They love to slander you if you have any substance. They say I love nothing but money and the Presbyterian Church and that is why I never married. They think everybody is dying to get married. It is true that I love my church and my bank. What is wrong with that? I will tell you a secret. Those same people talk mighty nice when they come in to get a crop loan or beg a mortgage extension! I never had the time to get married but it is nobody's business if I am married or not married. I care nothing for what they say. I would marry an ugly baboon if I wanted to and make him cashier. I never had the time to fool with it. A woman with brains and a frank tongue and one sleeve pinned up and an invalid mother to care for is at some disadvantage, although I will say I could have had two or three old untidy men around here who had their eyes fastened on my bank. No, thank you! It might surprise you to know their names.

I heard nothing more of the Texas officer, LaBoeuf. If he is yet alive and should happen to read these pages, I will be pleased to hear from him. I judge he is in his seventies now, and nearer eighty than seventy. I expect some of the starch has gone out of that "cowlick." Time just gets away from us. This ends my true account of how I avenged Frank Ross's blood over in the Choctaw Nation when snow was on the ground.