True Grit (4 page)

The prisoners who were already in the jail, which was in the basement of the Courthouse, commenced to shout and catcall through little barred windows at the new prisoners, saying, "Fresh fish!" and such like. Some of them used ugly expressions so that the women in the crowd turned their heads. I put my fingers in my ears and walked through the people up to the steps of the Courthouse and inside.

The bailiff at the door did not want to let me in the courtroom as I was a child but I told him I had business with Marshal Cogburn and held my ground. He saw I had spunk and he folded right up, not wanting me to cause a stir. He made me stand beside him just inside the door but that was all right because there were no empty seats anyway. People were even sitting on windowsills.

You will think it strange but I had scarcely heard of Judge Isaac Parker at that time, famous man that he was. I knew pretty well what was going on in my part of the world and I must have heard mention of him and his court but it made little impression on me. Of course we lived in his district but we had our own circuit courts to deal with killers and thieves. About the only outlaws in our country who ever went to Federal Court were "moonshiners" like old man Jerry Vick and his boys. Most of Judge Parker's customers came from the Indian Territory which was a refuge for desperadoes from all over the map.

Now I will tell you an interesting thing. For a long time there was no appeal from his court except to the President of the United States. They later changed that and when the Supreme Court started reversing him, Judge Parker was annoyed. He said those people up in Washington city did not understand the bloody conditions in the Territory. He called Solicitor-General Whitney, who was supposed to be on the judge's side, a "pardon broker" and said he knew no more of criminal law than he did of the hieroglyphics of the Great Pyramid. Well, for their part, those people up there said the judge was too hard and highhanded and too long-winded in his jury charges and they called his court "the Parker slaughterhouse." I don't know who was right. I know sixty-five of his marshals got killed. They had some mighty tough folks to deal with.

The judge was a tall big man with blue eyes and a brown billy-goat beard and he seemed to me to be old, though he was only around forty years of age at that time. His manner was grave. On his deathbed he asked for a priest and became a Catholic. That was his wife's religion. It was his own business and none of mine. If you had sentenced one hundred and sixty men to death and seen around eighty of them swing, then maybe at the last minute you would feel the need of some stronger medicine than the Methodists could make. It is something to think about. Toward the last, he said he didn't hang all those men, that the law had done it. When he died of dropsy in 1896 all the prisoners down there in that dark jail had a "jubilee" and the jailers had to put it down.

I have a newspaper record of a part of that Wharton trial and it is not an official transcript but it is faithful enough. I have used it and my memories to write a good historical article that I titled,
You will now listen to the sentence of the law, Odus Wharton, which is that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead dead! May God, whose laws you have broken and before whose dread tribunal you must appear, have mercy on your soul. Being a personal recollection of Isaac C. Parker, the famous Border Judge.

But the magazines of today do not know a good story when they see one. They would rather print trash. They say my article is too long and "discursive." Nothing is too long or too short either if you have a true and interesting tale and what I call a "graphic" writing style combined with educational aims. I do not fool around with newspapers. They are always after me for historical write-ups but when the talk gets around to money the paper editors are most of them "cheap skates." They think because I have a little money I will be happy to fill up their Sunday columns just to see my name in print like Lucille Biggers Langford and Florence Mabry Whiteside. As the little colored boy says,
"Not none of me!"
Lucille and Florence can do as they please. The paper editors are great ones for reaping where they have not sown. Another game they have is to send reporters out to talk to you and get your stories free. I know the young reporters are not paid well and I would not mind helping those boys out with their "scoops" if they could ever get anything straight.

When I got in the courtroom there was a Creek Indian boy on the witness stand and he was speaking in his own tongue and another Indian was interpreting for him. It was slow going. I stood there through almost an hour of it before they called Rooster Cogburn to the stand.

I had guessed wrong as to which one he was, picking out a younger and slighter man with a badge on his shirt, and I was surprised when an old one-eyed jasper that was built along the lines of Grover Cleveland went up and was sworn. I say "old." He was about forty years of age. The floor boards squeaked under his weight. He was wearing a dusty black suit of clothes and when he sat down I saw that his badge was on his vest. It was a little silver circle with a star in it. He had a mustache like Cleveland too.

Some people will say, well there were more men in the country at that time who looked like Cleveland than did not. Still, that is how he looked. Cleveland was once a sheriff himself. He brought a good deal of misery to the land in the Panic of '93 but I am not ashamed to own that my family supported him and has stayed with the Democrats right on through, up to and including Governor Alfred Smith, and not only because of Joe Robinson. Papa used to say that the only friends we had down here right after the war were the Irish Democrats in New York. Thad Stevens and the Republican gang would have starved us all out if they could. It is all in the history books. Now I will introduce Rooster by way of the transcript and get my story "back on the rails."

MR. BARLOW
: State your name and occupation please.
MR. COGBURN
: Reuben J. Cogburn. I am a deputy marshal for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas having criminal jurisdiction over the Indian Territory.
MR. BARLOW
: How long have you occupied such office?
MR. COGBURN
: Be four years in March.
MR. BARLOW
: On November second were you carrying out your official duties?
MR. COGBURN
: I was, yes sir.
MR. BARLOW
: Did something occur on that day out of the ordinary?
MR. COGBURN
: Yes sir.
MR. BARLOW
: Please describe in your own words what that occurrence was.
MR. COGBURN
: Yes sir. Well, not long after dinner on that day we was headed back for Fort Smith from the Creek Nation and was about four miles west of Webbers Falls.
MR. BARLOW
: One moment. Who was with you?
MR. COGBURN
: There was four other deputy marshals and me. We had a wagonload of prisoners and was headed back for Fort Smith. Seven prisoners. About four mile west of Webbers Falls that Creek boy named Will come riding up in a lather. He had news. He said that morning he was taking some eggs over to Tom Spotted-Gourd and his wife at their place on the Canadian River. When he got there he found the woman out in the yard with the back of her head shot off and the old man inside on the floor with a shotgun wound in his breast.
MR. GOUDY
: An objection.
JUDGE PARKER
: Confine your testimony to what you saw, Mr. Cogburn.
MR. COGBURN
: Yes sir. Well, Deputy Marshal Potter and me rode on down to Spotted-Gourd's place, with the wagon to come on behind us. Deputy Marshal Schmidt stayed with the wagon. When we got to the place we found everything as the boy Will had represented. The woman was out in the yard dead with blowflies on her head and the old man was inside with his breast blowed open by a scatter-gun and his feet burned. He was still alive but he just was. Wind was whistling in and out of the bloody hole. He said about four o'clock that morning them two Wharton boys had rode up there drunk --
MR. GOUDY
: An objection.
MR. BARLOW
: This is a dying declaration, your honor.
JUDGE PARKER
: Overruled. Proceed, Mr. Cogburn.
MR. COGBURN
: He said them two Wharton boys, Odus and C. C. by name, had rode up there drunk and throwed down on him with a double barrel shotgun and said, "Tell us where your money is, old man." He would not tell them and they lit some pine knots and held them to his feet and he told them it was in a fruit jar under a gray rock at one corner of the smokehouse. Said he had over four hundred dollars in banknotes in it. Said his wife was crying and taking on all this time and begging for mercy. Said she took off out the door and Odus run to the door and shot her. Said when he raised up off the floor where he was laying Odus turned and shot him. Then they left.
MR. BARLOW
: What happened next?
MR. COGBURN
: He died on us. Passed away in considerable pain.
MR. BARLOW
: Mr. Spotted-Gourd, that is.
MR. COGBURN
: Yes sir.
MR. BARLOW
: What did you and Marshal Potter do then?
MR. COGBURN
: We went out to the smokehouse and that rock had been moved and that jar was gone.
MR. GOUDY
: An objection.
JUDGE PARKER
: The witness will keep his speculations to himself.
MR. BARLOW
: You found a flat gray rock at the corner of the smokehouse with a hollowed-out space under it?
MR. GOUDY
: If the prosecutor is going to give evidence I suggest that he be sworn.
JUDGE PARKER
:
Mr. Barlow
, that is not proper examination.
MR. BARLOW
: I am sorry, your honor. Marshal Cogburn, what did you find, if anything, at the corner of the smokehouse?
MR. COGBURN
: We found a gray rock with a hole right by it.
MR. BARLOW
: What was in the hole?
MR. COGBURN
: Nothing. No jar or nothing,
MR. BARLOW
. What did you do next?
MR. COGBURN
: We waited on the wagon to come. When it got there we had a talk amongst ourselves as to who would ride after the Whartons. Potter and me had had dealings with them boys before so we went. It was about a two-hour ride up near where the North Fork strikes the Canadian, on a branch that turns into the Canadian. We got there not long before sundown.
MR. BARLOW
: And what did you find?
MR. COGBURN
: I had my glass and we spotted the two boys and their old daddy, Aaron Wharton by name, standing down there on the creek bank with some hogs, five or six hogs. They had killed a shoat and was butchering it. It was swinging from a limb and they had built a fire under a wash pot for scalding water.
We tied up our horses about a quarter of a mile down the creek and slipped along on foot through the brush so we could get the drop on them. When we showed I told the old man, Aaron Wharton, that we was U. S. marshals and we needed to talk to his boys. He picked up a ax and commenced to cussing us and blackguarding this court.
MR. BARLOW
: What did you do?
MR. COGBURN
: I started backing away from the ax and tried to talk some sense to him. While this was going on C. C. Wharton edged over by the wash pot behind that steam and picked up a shotgun that was laying up against a saw-log. Potter seen him but it was too late. Before he could get off a shot C. C. Wharton pulled down on him with one barrel and then turned to do the same for me with the other barrel. I shot him and when the old man swung the ax I shot him. Odus lit out for the creek and I shot him. Aaron Wharton and C. C. Wharton was dead when they hit the ground. Odus Wharton was just winged.
MR. BARLOW
: Then what happened?
MR. COGBURN
: Well, it was all over. I dragged Odus Wharton over to a blackjack tree and cuffed his arms and legs around it with him setting down. I tended to Potter's wound with my handkerchief as best I could. He was in a bad way. I went up to the shack and Aaron Wharton's squaw was there but she would not talk. I searched the premises and found a quart jar under some stove wood that had banknotes in it to the tune of four hundred and twenty dollars.
MR. BARLOW
: What happened to Marshal Potter?
MR. COGBURN
: He died in this city six days later of septic fever. Leaves a wife and six babies.
MR. GOUDY
: An objection.
JUDGE PARKER
: Strike the comment.
MR. BARLOW
: What became of Odus Wharton?
MR. COGBURN
: There he sets.
MR. BARLOW
: You may ask, Mr. Goudy.
MR. GOUDY
: Thank you,
Mr. Barlow
. How long did you say you have been a deputy marshal, Mr. Cogburn.?
MR. COGBURN
: Going on four years.
MR. GOUDY
: How many men have you shot in that time?
MR. BARLOW
: An objection.
MR. GOUDY
: There is more to this shooting than meets the eye, your honor. I am trying to establish the bias of the witness.
JUDGE PARKER
: The objection is overruled.
MR. GOUDY
: How many, Mr. Cogburn?
MR. COGBURN
: I never shot nobody I didn't have to.
MR. GOUDY
: That was not the question. How many?
MR. COGBURN
: Shot or killed?
MR. GOUDY
: Let us restrict it to "killed" so that we may have a manageable figure. How many people have you killed since you became a marshal for this court?
MR. COGBURN
: Around twelve or fifteen, stopping men in flight and defending myself.
MR. GOUDY
: Around twelve or fifteen. So many that you cannot keep a precise count. Remember that you are under oath. I have examined the records and a more accurate figure is readily available. Come now, how many?
MR. COGBURN
: I believe them two Whartons made twenty-three.
MR. GOUDY
: I felt sure it would come to you with a little effort. Now let us see. Twenty-three dead men in four years. That comes to about six men a year.
MR. COGBURN
: It is dangerous work.
MR. GOUDY
: So it would seem. And yet how much more dangerous for those luckless individuals who find themselves being arrested by you. How many members of this one family, the Wharton family, have you killed?
MR. BARLOW
: Your honor, I think counsel should be advised that the marshal is not the defendant in this action.
MR. GOUDY
: Your honor, my client and his deceased father and brother were provoked into a gun battle by this man Cogburn. Last spring he shot and killed Aaron Wharton's oldest son and on November second he fairly leaped at the chance to massacre the rest of the family. I will prove that. This assassin Cogburn has too long been clothed with the authority of an honorable court. The only way I can prove my client's innocence is by bringing out the facts of these two related shootings, together with a searching review of Cogburn's methods. All the other principals, including Marshal Potter, are conveniently dead --
JUDGE PARKER
: That will do, Mr. Goudy, Restrain yourself. We shall hear your argument later. The defense will be given every latitude. I do not think the indiscriminate use of such words as "massacre" and "assassin" will bring us any nearer the truth. Pray continue with your cross-examination.
MR. GOUDY
: Thank you, your honor. Mr. Cogburn, did you know the late Dub Wharton, brother to the defendant, Odus Wharton?
MR. COGBURN
: I had to shoot him in self-defense last April in the Going Snake District of the Cherokee Nation.
MR. GOUDY
: How did that come about?
MR. COGBURN
: I was trying to serve a warrant on him for selling ardent spirits to the Cherokees. It was not the first one. He come at me with a kingbolt and said, "Rooster, I am going to punch that other eye out." I defended myself.
MR. GOUDY
: He was armed with nothing more than a kingbolt from a wagon tongue?
MR. COGBURN
: I didn't know what else he had. I saw he had that. I have seen men badly tore up with things no bigger than a kingbolt.
MR. GOUDY
: Were you yourself armed?
MR. COGBURN
: Yes sir. I had a hand gun.
MR. GOUDY
: What kind of hand gun?
MR. COGBURN
: A forty-four forty Colt's revolver.
MR. GOUDY
: Is it not true that you walked in upon him in the dead of night with that revolver in your hand and gave him no warning?
MR. COGBURN
: I had pulled it, yes sir.
MR. GOUDY
: Was the weapon loaded and cocked?
MR. COGBURN
: Yes sir.
MR. GOUDY
: Were you holding it behind you or in any way concealing it?
MR. COGBURN
: No sir.
MR. GOUDY
: Are you saying that Dub Wharton advanced into the muzzle of that cocked revolver with nothing more than a small piece of iron in his hand?
MR. COGBURN
: That was the way of it.
MR. GOUDY
: It is passing strange. Now, is it not true that on November second you appeared before Aaron Wharton and his two sons in a similar menacing manner, which is to say, you sprang upon them from cover with that same deadly six-shot revolver in your hand?
MR. COGBURN
: I always try to be ready.
MR. GOUDY
: The gun was pulled and ready in your hand?
MR. COGBURN
: Yes sir.
MR. GOUDY
: Loaded and cocked?
MR, COGBURN: If it ain't loaded and cocked it will not shoot.
MR. GOUDY
: Just answer my questions if you please.
MR. COGBURN
: That one does not make any sense.
JUDGE PARKER
: Do not bandy words with counsel, Mr. Cogburn.
MR. COGBURN
: Yes sir.
MR. GOUDY
: Mr. Cogburn, I now direct your attention back to that scene on the creek bank. It is near dusk. Mr. Aaron Wharton and his two surviving sons are going about their lawful business, secure on their own property. They are butchering a hog so that they might have a little meat for their table --
MR. COGBURN
: Them was stolen hogs. That farm belongs to the Wharton squaw, Minnie Wharton.
MR. GOUDY
: Your honor, will you instruct this witness to keep silent until he is asked a question?
JUDGE PARKER
: Yes, and I will instruct you to start asking questions so that he may respond with answers.
MR. GOUDY
: I am sorry, your honor. All right. Mr. Wharton and his sons are on the creek bank. Suddenly, out of the brake, spring two men with revolvers at the ready --
MR. BARLOW
: An objection.
JUDGE PARKER
: The objection has merit. Mr. Goudy, I have been extremely indulgent. I am going to permit you to continue this line of questioning but I must insist that the cross-examination take the form of questions and answers instead of dramatic soliloquies. And I will caution you that this had best lead to something substantial and fairly soon.
MR. GOUDY
: Thank you, your honor. If the court will bear with me for a time. My client has expressed fears about the severity of this court but I have reassured him that no man in this noble Republic loves truth and justice and mercy more than Judge Isaac Parker --
JUDGE PARKER
: You are out of order, Mr. Goudy.
MR. GOUDY
: Yes sir. All right. Now. Mr. Cogburn, when you and Marshal Potter sprang from the brush, what was Aaron Wharton's reaction on seeing you?
MR. COGBURN
: He picked up a ax and commenced to cussing us.
MR. GOUDY
: An instinctive reflex against a sudden danger. Was that the nature of the move?
MR. COGBURN
: I don't know what that means.
MR. GOUDY
: You would not have made such a move yourself?