True Grit

THREE

Mrs. Floyd served me no meat for breakfast, only grits and a fried egg. After eating I put the watch and knife in my pocket and took the gun along in the sugar sack.

At the Federal Courthouse I learned that the head marshal had gone to Detroit, Michigan, to deliver prisoners to the “house of correction,” as they called it. A deputy who worked in the office said they would get around to Tom Chaney in good time, but that he would have to wait his turn. He showed me a list of indicted outlaws that were then on the loose in the Indian Territory and it looked like the delinquent tax list that they run in the Arkansas Gazette every year in little type. I did not like the looks of that, nor did I care much for the “smarty” manner of the deputy. He was puffed up by his office. You can expect that out of Federal people and to make it worse this was a Republican gang that cared nothing for the opinion of the good people of Arkansas who are Democrats.

In the courtroom itself they were empaneling a jury. The bailiff at the door told me that the man Rooster Cogburn would be around later in the day when the trial began as he was the main witness for the prosecution.

I went to Stonehill’s stock barn. He had a nice barn and behind it a big corral and a good many small feeder pens. The bargain cow ponies, around thirty head, all colors, were in the corral. I thought they would be broken-down scrubs but they were frisky things with clear eyes and their coats looked healthy enough, though dusty and matted. They had probably never known a brush. They had burrs in their tails.

I had hated these ponies for the part they played in my father’s death but now I realized the notion was fanciful, that it was wrong to charge blame to these pretty beasts who knew neither good nor evil but only innocence. I say that of these ponies. I have known some horses and a good many more pigs who I believe harbored evil intent in their hearts. I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sly faces? Some preachers will say, well, that is superstitious “claptrap.” My answer is this: Preacher, go to your Bible and read Luke 8: 26-33.

Stonehill had an office in one corner of the barn. On the door glass it said, “Col. G. Stonehill. Licensed Auctioneer. Cotton Factor.” He was in there behind his desk and he had a red-hot stove going. He was a prissy baldheaded man with eyeglasses.

I said, “How much are you paying for cotton?”

He looked up at me and said, “Nine and a half for low middling and ten for ordinary.”

I said, “We got most of ours out early and sold it to Woodson Brothers in Little Rock for eleven cents.”

He said, “Then I suggest you take the balance of it to the Woodson Brothers.”

“We have sold it all,” said I. “We only got ten and a half on the last sale.”

“Why did you come here to tell me this?”

“I thought we might shop around up here next year, but I guess we are doing all right in Little Rock.” I showed him the note from the sheriff. After he had read it he was not disposed to be so short with me.

He took off his eyeglasses and said, “It was a tragic thing. May I say your father impressed me with his manly qualities. He was a close trader but he acted the gentleman. My watchman had his teeth knocked out and can take only soup.”

I said, “I am sorry to hear it.”

He said, “The killer has flown to the Territory and is now on the scout there.”

“This is what I heard.”

“He will find plenty of his own stamp there,” said he. “Birds of a feather. It is a sink of crime. Not a day goes by but there comes some new report of a farmer bludgeoned, a wife outraged, or a blameless traveler set upon and cut down in a sanguinary ambuscade. The civilizing arts of commerce do not flourish there.”

I said, “I have hopes that the marshals will get him soon. His name is Tom Chaney. He worked for us. I am trying to get action. I aim to see him shot or hanged.”

“Yes, yes, well might you labor to that end,” said Stonehill. “At the same time I will counsel patience. The brave marshals do their best but they are few in number. The lawbreakers are legion and they range over a vast country that offers many natural hiding places. The marshal travels about friendless and alone in that criminal nation. Every man’s hand is against him there save in large part for that of the Indian who has been cruelly imposed upon by felonious intruders from the States.”

I said, “I would like to sell those ponies back to you that my father bought.”

He said, “I fear that is out of the question. I will see that they are shipped to you at my earliest convenience.”

I said, “We don’t want the ponies now. We don’t need them.”

“That hardly concerns me,” said he. “Your father bought these ponies and paid for them and there is an end of it. I have the bill of sale. If I had any earthly use for them I might consider an offer but I have already lost money on them and, be assured, I do not intend to lose more. I will be happy to accommodate you in shipping them. The popular steamer Alice Waddell leaves tomorrow for Little Rock. I will do what I can to find space on it for you and the stock.”

I said, “I want three hundred dollars for Papa’s saddle horse that was stolen.”

He said, “You will have to take that up with the man who has the horse.”

“Tom Chaney stole it while it was in your care,” said I. “You are responsible.”

Stonehill laughed at that. He said, “I admire your sand but I believe you will find I am not liable for such claims. Let me say too that your valuation of the horse is high by about two hundred dollars.”

I said, “If anything, my price is low. Judy is a fine racing mare. She has won purses of twenty-five dollars at the fair. I have seen her jump an eight-rail fence with a heavy rider.”

“All very interesting, I’m sure,” said he.

“Then you will offer nothing?”

“Nothing except what is yours. The ponies are yours, take them. Your father’s horse was stolen by a murderous criminal. This is regrettable but I had provided reasonable protection for the animal as per the implicit agreement with the client. We must each of us bear our own misfortunes. Mine is that I have temporarily lost the services of my watchman.”

“I will take it to law,” said I.

“You must do as you think best,” said he.

“We will see if a widow and her three small children can get fair treatment in the courts of this city.”

“You have no case.”

“Lawyer J. Noble Daggett of Dardanelle, Arkansas, may think otherwise. Also a jury.”

“Where is your mother?”

“She is at home in Yell County looking after my sister Victoria and my brother Little Frank.”

“You must fetch her then. I do not like to deal with children.”

“You will not like it any better when Lawyer Daggett gets hold of you. He is a grown man.”

“You are impudent.”

“I do not wish to be, sir, but I will not be pushed about when I am in the right.”

“I will take it up with my attorney.”

“And I will take it up with mine. I will send him a message by telegraph and he will be here on the evening train. He will make money and I will make money and your lawyer will make money and you, Mr. Licensed Auctioneer, will foot the bill.”

“I cannot make an agreement with a child. You are not accountable. You cannot be bound to a contract.”

“Lawyer Daggett will back up any decision I make. You may rest easy on that score. You can confirm any agreement by telegraph.”

“This is a damned nuisance!” he exclaimed. “How am I to get my work done? I have a sale tomorrow.”

“There can be no settlement after I leave this office,” said I. “It will go to law.”

He worried with his eyeglasses for a minute and then said, “I will pay two hundred dollars to your father’s estate when I have in my hand a letter from your lawyer absolving me of all liability from the beginning of the world to date. It must be signed by your lawyer and your mother and it must be notarized. The offer is more than liberal and I only make it to avoid the possibility of troublesome litigation. I should never have come here. They told me this town was to be the Pittsburgh of the Southwest.”

I said, “I will take two hundred dollars for Judy, plus one hundred dollars for the ponies and twenty-five dollars for the gray horse that Tom Chaney left. He is easily worth forty dollars. That is three hundred and twenty-five dollars total.”

“The ponies have no part in this,” said he. “I will not buy them.”

“Then I will keep the ponies and the price for Judy will be three hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

Stonehill snorted. “I would not pay three hundred and twenty-five dollars for winged Pegasus, and that splayfooted gray does not even belong to you.”

I said, “Yes, he does. Papa only let Tom Chaney have the use of him.”

“My patience is wearing thin. You are an unnatural child. I will pay two hundred and twenty-five dollars and keep the gray horse. I don’t want the ponies.”

“I cannot settle for that.”

“This is my last offer. Two hundred and fifty dollars. For that I get a release and I keep your father’s saddle. I am also writing off a feed and stabling charge. The gray horse is not yours to sell.”

“The saddle is not for sale. I will keep it. Lawyer Daggett can prove the ownership of the gray horse. He will come after you with a writ of replevin.”

“All right, now listen very carefully as I will not bargain further. I will take the ponies back and keep the gray horse and settle for three hundred dollars. Now you must take that or leave it and I do not much care which it is.”

I said, “I am sure Lawyer Daggett would not wish me to consider anything under three hundred and twenty-five dollars. What you get for that is everything except the saddle and you get out of a costly lawsuit as well. It will go harder if Lawyer Daggett makes the terms as he will include a generous fee for himself.”

“Lawyer Daggett! Lawyer Daggett! Who is this famous pleader of whose name I was happily ignorant ten minutes ago?”

I said, “Have you ever heard of the Great Arkansas River, Vicksburg & Gulf Steamship Company?”

“I have done business with the G.A.V.&G.,” said he.

“Lawyer Daggett is the man who forced them into receivership,” said I. “They tried to ‘mess’ with him. It was a feather in his cap. He is on familiar terms with important men in Little Rock. The talk is he will be governor one day.”

“Then he is a man of little ambition,” said Stonehill, “incommensurate with his capacity for making mischief. I would rather be a country road overseer in Tennessee than governor of this benighted state. There is more honor in it.”

“If you don’t like it here you should pack your traps and go back where you came from.”

“Would that I could get out from under!” said he. “I would be aboard the Friday morning packet with a song of thanksgiving on my lips.”

“People who don’t like Arkansas can go to the devil!” said I. “What did you come here for?”

“I was sold a bill of goods.”

“Three hundred and twenty-five dollars is my figure.”

“I would like to have that in writing for what it is worth.” He wrote out a short agreement. I read it over and made a change or two and he initialed the changes. He said, “Tell your lawyer to send the letter to me here at Stonehill’s Livery Stable. When I have it in my hand I will remit the extortion money. Sign this.”

I said, “I will have him send the letter to me at the Monarch boardinghouse. When you give me the money I will give you the letter. I will sign this instrument when you have given me twenty-five dollars as a token of your good faith.” Stonehill gave me ten dollars and I signed the paper.

I went to the telegraph office. I tried to keep the message down but it took up almost a full blank setting forth the situation and what was needed. I told Lawyer Daggett to let Mama know I was well and would be home soon. I forget what it cost.

I bought some crackers and a piece of hoop cheese and an apple at a grocery store and sat on a nail keg by the stove and had a cheap yet nourishing lunch. You know what they say, “Enough is as good as a feast.” When I had finished eating I returned to Stonehill’s place and tried to give the apple core to one of the ponies. They all shied away and would have nothing to do with me or my gift. The poor things had probably never tasted an apple. I went inside the stock barn out of the wind and lay down on some oat sacks. Nature tells us to rest after meals and people who are too busy to heed that inner voice are often dead at the age of fifty years.

Stonehill came by on his way out wearing a little foolish Tennessee hat. He stopped and looked at me.

I said, “I am taking a short nap.”

He said, “Are you quite comfortable?”

I said, “I wanted to get out of the wind. I figured you would not mind.”

“I don’t want you smoking cigarettes in here.”

“I don’t use tobacco.”

“I don’t want you punching holes in those sacks with your boots.”

“I will be careful. Shut that door good when you go out.”

I had not realized how tired I was. It was well up in the afternoon when I awoke. I was stiff and my nose had begun to drip, sure sign of a cold coming on. You should always be covered while sleeping. I dusted myself off and washed my face under a pump and picked up my gun sack and made haste to the Federal Courthouse.

When I got there I saw that another crowd had gathered, although not as big as the one the day before. My thought was: What? Surely they are not having another hanging! They were not. What had attracted the people this time was the arrival of two prisoner wagons from the Territory.

The marshals were unloading the prisoners and poking them sharply along with their Winchester repeating rifles. The men were all chained together like fish on a string. They were mostly white men but there were also some Indians and half-breeds and Negroes. It was awful to see but you must remember that these chained beasts were murderers and robbers and train wreckers and bigamists and counterfeiters, some of the most wicked men in the world. They had ridden the “hoot-owl trail” and tasted the fruits of evil and now justice had caught up with them to demand payment. You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.

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.

MB. GOUDY: Thank you, your honor. Mr. Cogburn, did you know the late Dub Wharton, brother to the defendant, Odus Wharton?

MB. 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?

MB. 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.

MB. GOUDY: Were you yourself armed?

MB. COGBURN: Yes sir. I had a hand gun.

MR. GOUDY: What kind of hand gun?

MB. COGBURN: A forty-four 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.

MB. 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?

MR. COGBURN: If it was me and Potter with the drop I would have done what I was told.

MR. GOUDY: Yes, exactly, you and Potter. We can agree that the Whartons were in peril of their lives. All right. Let us go back to yet an earlier scene, at the Spotted-Gourd home, around the wagon. Who was in charge of that wagon?

MR. COGBURN: Deputy Marshal Schmidt.

MR. GOUDY: He did not want you to go to the Wharton place, did he?

MR. COGBURN: We talked about it some and he agreed Potter and me should go.

MR. GOUDY: But at first he did not want you to go, did he, knowing there was bad blood between you and the Whartons?

MR. COGBURN: He must have wanted me to go or he would not have sent me.

MR. GOUDY: You had to persuade him, did you not?

MR. COGBURN: I knowed the Whartons and I was afraid somebody would get killed going up against them.

MR. GOUDY: As it turned out, how many were killed?

MR. COGBURN: Three. But the Whartons did not get away. It could have been worse.

MR. GOUDY: Yes, you might have been killed yourself.

MR. COGBURN: You mistake my meaning. Three murdering thieves might have got loose and gone to kill somebody else. But you are right that I might have been killed myself. It was mighty close at that and it is no light matter to me.

MR. GOUDY: Nor to me. You are truly one of nature’s survivors, Mr. Cogburn, and I do not make light of your gift. I believe you testified that you backed away from Aaron Wharton.

MR. COGBURN: That is right.

MR. GOUDY: You were backing away?

MR. COGBURN: Yes sir. He had that ax raised.

MR. GOUDY: Which direction were you going?

MR. COGBURN: I always go backwards when I am backing up.

MR. GOUDY: I appreciate the humor of that remark. Aaron Wharton was standing by the wash pot when you arrived?

MR. COGBURN: It was more like squatting. He was stoking up the fire under the pot.

MR. GOUDY: And where was the ax?

MR. COGBURN: Right there at his hand.

MR. GOUDY: Now you say you had a cocked revolver clearly visible in your hand and yet he picked up that ax and advanced upon you, somewhat in the manner of Dub Wharton with that nail or rolled-up paper or whatever it was in his hand?

MR. COGBURN: Yes sir. Commenced to cussing and laying about with threats.

MR. GOUDY: And you were backing away? You were moving away from the direction of the wash pot?

MR. COGBURN: Yes sir.

MR. GOUDY: How far did you back up before the shooting started?

MR. COGBURN: About seven or eight steps.

MR. GOUDY: Meaning Aaron Wharton advanced on you about the same distance, some seven or eight steps?

MR. COGBURN: Something like that.

MR. GOUDY: What would that be? About sixteen feet?

MR. COGBURN: Something like that.

MR. GOUDY: Will you explain to the jury why his body was found immediately by the wash pot with one arm in the fire, his sleeve and hand smoldering?

MR. COGBURN: I don’t think that is where he was.

MR. GOUDY: Did you move the body after you had shot him?

MR. COGBURN: No sir.

MR. GOUDY: You did not drag his body back to the fire?

MR. COGBURN: No sir. I don’t think that is where he was.

MR. GOUDY: Two witnesses who arrived on the scene moments after the shooting will testify to the location of the body. You don’t remember moving the body?

MR. COGBURN: If that is where he was I might have moved him. I don’t remember it.

MR. GOUDY: Why did you place the upper part of his body in the fire?

MR. COGBURN: Well, I didn’t do it.

MR. GOUDY: Then you did not move him and he was not advancing upon you at all. Or you did move him and throw his body in the flames. Which? Make up your mind.

MR. COGBURN: Them hogs that was rooting around there might have moved him.

MR. GOUDY: Hogs indeed.

JUDGE PARKER: Mr. Goudy, darkness is upon us. Do you think you can finish with this witness in the next few minutes?

MR. GOUDY: I will need more time, your honor.

JUDGE PARKER: Very well. You may resume at eight-thirty o’clock tomorrow morning. Mr. Cogburn, you will return to the witness stand at that time. The jury will not talk to others or converse amongst themselves about this case. The defendant is remanded to custody.

The judge rapped his gavel and I jumped, not looking for that noise. The crowd broke up to leave. I had not been able to get a good look at that Odus Wharton but now I did when he stood up with an officer on each side of him. Even though he had one arm in a sling they kept his wrists cuffed in court. That was how dangerous he was. If there ever was a man with black murder in his countenance it was Odus Wharton. He was a half-breed with eyes that were mean and close-set and that stayed open all the time like snake eyes. It was a face hardened in sin. Creeks are good Indians, they say, but a Creek-white like him or a Creek-Negro is something else again.

When the officers were taking Wharton out he passed by Rooster Cogburn and said something to him, some ugly insult or threat, you could tell. Rooster just looked at him. The people pushed me on through the door and outside. I waited on the porch.

Rooster was one of the last ones out. He had a paper in one hand and a sack of tobacco in the other and he was trying to roll a cigarette. His hands were shaking and he was spilling tobacco.

I approached him and said, “Mr. Rooster Cogburn?”

He said, “What is it?” His mind was on something else.

I said, “I would like to talk with you a minute.”

He looked me over. “What is it?” he said.

I said, “They tell me you are a man with true grit.”

He said, “What do you want, girl? Speak up. It is suppertime.”

I said, “Let me show you how to do that.” I took the half-made cigarette and shaped it up and licked it and sealed it and twisted the ends and gave it back to him. It was pretty loose because he had already wrinkled the paper. He lit it and it flamed up and burned about halfway down.

I said, “Your makings are too dry.”

He studied it and said, “Something.”

I said, “I am looking for the man who shot and killed my father, Frank Ross, in front of the Monarch boardinghouse. The man’s name is Tom Chaney. They say he is over in the Indian Territory and I need somebody to go after him.”

He said, “What is your name, girl? Where do you live?”

“My name is Mattie Ross,” I replied. “We are located in Yell County near Dardanelle. My mother is at home looking after my sister Victoria and my brother Little Frank.”

“You had best go home to them,” said he. “They will need some help with the churning.”

I said, “The high sheriff and a man in the marshal’s office have given me the full particulars. You can get a fugitive warrant for Tom Chaney and go after him. The Government will pay you two dollars for bringing him in plus ten cents a mile for each of you. On top of that I will pay you a fifty-dollar reward.”

“You have looked into this a right smart,” said he.

“Yes, I have,” said I. “I mean business.”

He said, “What have you got there in your poke?”

I opened the sugar sack and showed him.

“By God!” said he. “A Colt’s dragoon! Why, you are no bigger than a corn nubbin! What are you doing with that pistol?”

I said, “It belonged to my father. I intend to kill Tom Chaney with it if the law fails to do so.”

“Well, that piece will do the job. If you can find a high stump to rest it on while you take aim and shoot.”

“Nobody here knew my father and I am afraid nothing much is going to be done about Chaney except I do it myself. My brother is a child and my mother’s people are in Monterey, California. My Grandfather Ross is not able to ride.”

“I don’t believe you have fifty dollars.”

“I will have it in a day or two. Have you heard of a robber called Lucky Ned Pepper?”

“I know him well. I shot him in the lip last August down in the Winding Stair Mountains. He was plenty lucky that day.”

“They think Tom Chaney has tied up with him.”

“I don’t believe you have fifty dollars, baby sister, but if you are hungry I will give you supper and we will talk it over and make medicine. How does that suit you?”

I said it suited me right down to ground. I figured he would live in a house with his family and was not prepared to discover that he had only a small room in the back of a Chinese grocery store on a dark street. He did not have a wife. The Chinaman was called Lee. He had a supper ready of boiled potatoes and stew meat. The three of us ate at a low table with a coal-oil lamp in the middle of it. There was a blanket for a tablecloth. A little bell rang once and Lee went up front through a curtain to wait on a customer.

Rooster said he had heard about the shooting of my father but did not know the details. I told him. I noticed by the lamplight that his bad left eye was not completely shut. A little crescent of white showed at the bottom and glistened in the light. He ate with a spoon in one hand and a wadded-up piece of white bread in the other, with considerable sopping. What a contrast to the Chinaman with his delicate chopsticks! I had never seen them in use before. Such nimble fingers! When the coffee had boiled Lee got the pot off the stove and started to pour. I put my hand over my cup.

“I do not drink coffee, thank you.”

Rooster said, “What do you drink?”

“I am partial to cold buttermilk when I can get it.”

“Well, we don’t have none,” said he. “Nor lemonade either.”

“Do you have any sweet milk?”

Lee went up front to his icebox and brought back a jar of milk. The cream had been skimmed from it.

I said, “This tastes like blue-John to me.”

Rooster took my cup and put it on the floor and a fat brindle cat appeared out of the darkness where the bunks were and came over to lap up the milk. Rooster said, “The General is not so hard to please.” The cat’s name was General Sterling Price. Lee served some honey cakes for dessert and Rooster spread butter and preserves all over his like a small child. He had a “sweet tooth.”

I offered to clean things up and they took me at my word. The pump and the washstand were outside. The cat followed me out for the scraps. I did the best I could on the enamelware plates with a rag and yellow soap and cold water. When I got back inside Rooster and Lee were playing cards on the table.

Rooster said, “Let me have my cup.” I gave it to him and he poured some whiskey in it from a demijohn. Lee smoked a long pipe.

I said, “What about my proposition?”

Rooster said, “I am thinking on it.”

“What is that you are playing?”

“Seven-up. Do you want a hand?”

“I don’t know how to play it. I know how to play bid whist.”

“We don’t play bid whist.”

I said, “It sounds like a mighty easy way to make fifty dollars to me. You would just be doing your job anyway, and getting extra pay besides.”

“Don’t crowd me,” said he. “I am thinking about expenses.”

I watched them and kept quiet except for blowing my nose now and again. After a time I said, “I don’t see how you can play cards and drink whiskey and think about this detective business all at the same time.”

He said, “If I’m going up against Ned Pepper I will need a hundred dollars. I have figured out that much. I will want fifty dollars in advance.”

“You are trying to take advantage of me.”

“I am giving you my children’s rate,” he said. “It will not be a easy job of work, smoking Ned out. He will be holed up down there in the hills in the Choctaw Nation. There will be expenses.”

“I hope you don’t think I am going to keep you in whiskey.”

“I don’t have to buy that, I confiscate it. You might try a little touch of it for your cold.”

“No, thank you.”

“This is the real article. It is double-rectified busthead from Madison County, aged in the keg. A little spoonful would do you a power of good.”

“I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Well, a hundred dollars is my price, sis. There it is.”

“For that kind of money I would want a guarantee. I would want to be pretty sure of what I was getting.”

“I have not yet seen the color of your money.”

“I will have the money in a day or two. I will think about your proposition and talk to you again. Now I want to go to the Monarch boardinghouse. You had better walk over there with me.”

“Are you scared of the dark?”

“I never was scared of the dark.”

“If I had a big horse pistol like yours I would not be scared of any booger-man.”

“I am not scared of the booger-man. I don’t know the way over there.”

“You are a lot of trouble. Wait until I finish this hand. You cannot tell what a Chinaman is thinking. That is how they beat you at cards.”

They were betting money on the play and Rooster was not winning. I kept after him but he would only say, “One more hand,” and pretty soon I was asleep with my head on the table. Some time later he began to shake me.

“Wake up,” he was saying. “Wake up, baby sister.”

“What is it?” said I.

He was drunk and he was fooling around with Papa’s pistol. He pointed out something on the floor over by the curtain that opened into the store. I looked and it was a big long barn rat. He sat there hunkered on the floor, his tail flat, and he was eating meal that was spilling out of a hole in the sack. I gave a start but Rooster put his tobacco-smelling hand over my mouth and gripped my cheeks and held me down.

He said, “Be right still.” I looked around for Lee and figured he must have gone to bed. Rooster said, “I will try this the new way. Now watch.” He leaned forward and spoke at the rat in a low voice, saying, “I have a writ here that says for you to stop eating Chen Lee’s corn meal forthwith. It is a rat writ. It is a writ for a rat and this is lawful service of said writ.” Then he looked over at me and said, “Has he stopped?” I gave no reply. I have never wasted any time encouraging drunkards or show-offs. He said, “It don’t look like to me he has stopped.” He was holding Papa’s revolver down at his left side and he fired twice without aiming. The noise filled up that little room and made the curtains jump. My ears rang. There was a good deal of smoke.

Lee sat up in his bunk and said, “Outside is place for shooting.”

“I was serving some papers,” said Rooster.

The rat was a mess. I went over and picked him up by the tail and pitched him out the back door for Sterling, who should have smelled him out and dispatched him in the first place.

I said to Rooster, “Don’t be shooting that pistol again. I don’t have any more loads for it.”

He said, “You would not know how to load it if you did have.”

“I know how to load it.”

He went to his bunk and pulled out a tin box that was underneath and brought it to the table. The box was full of oily rags and loose cartridges and odd bits of leather and string. He brought out some lead balls and little copper percussion caps and a tin of powder.

He said, “All right, let me see you do it. There is powder, caps and bullets.”

“I don’t want to right now. I am sleepy and I want to go to my quarters at the Monarch boardinghouse.”

“Well, I didn’t think you could,” said he.

He commenced to reload the two chambers. He dropped things and got them all askew and did not do a good job. When he had finished he said, “This piece is too big and clumsy for you. You are better off with something that uses cartridges.”

He poked around in the bottom of the box and came up with a funny little pistol with several barrels. “Now this is what you need,” he said. “It is a twenty-two pepper-box that shoots five times, and sometimes all at once. It is called ‘The Ladies’ Companion.’ There is a sporting lady called Big Faye in this city who was shot twice with it by her stepsister. Big Faye dresses out at about two hundred and ninety pounds. The bullets could not make it through to any vitals. That was unusual. It will give you good service against ordinary people. It is like new. I will trade you even for this old piece.”

I said, “No, that was Papa’s gun. I am ready to go. Do you hear me?” I took my revolver from him and put it back in the sack. He poured some more whiskey in his cup.

“You can’t serve papers on a rat, baby sister.”

“I never said you could.”

“These shitepoke lawyers think you can but you can’t. All you can do with a rat is kill him or let him be. They don’t care nothing about papers. What is your thinking on it?”

“Are you going to drink all that?”

“Judge Parker knows. He is a old carpetbagger but he knows his rats. We had a good court here till the pettifogging lawyers moved in on it. You might think Polk Goudy is a fine gentleman to look at his clothes, but he is the sorriest son of a bitch that God ever let breathe. I know him well. Now they have got the judge down on me, and the marshal too. The rat-catcher is too hard on the rats. That is what they say. Let up on them rats! Give them rats a fair show! What kind of show did they give Columbus Potter? Tell me that. A finer man never lived.”

I got up and walked out thinking I would shame him into coming along and seeing that I got home all right but he did not follow. He was still talking when I left. The town was quite dark at that end and I walked fast and saw not a soul although I heard music and voices and saw lights up toward the river where the barrooms were.

When I reached Garrison Avenue I stopped and got my bearings. I have always had a good head for directions. It did not take me long to reach the Monarch. The house was dark. I went around to the back door with the idea that it would be unlocked because of the toilet traffic. I was right. Since I had not yet paid for another day it occurred to me that Mrs. Floyd might have installed a new guest in Grandma Turner’s bed, perhaps some teamster or railroad detective. I was much relieved to find my side of the bed vacant. I got the extra blankets and arranged them as I had done the night before. I said my prayers and it was some time before I got any sleep. I had a cough.