Christmas Lights in a Wad

by Phil Truman

Thought I'd share a story with you this month as we head into The Season. It involves a couple friends of mine. Intimate friends, I guess you could say, because they wandered into my mind some years ago as conjured-up good old boys.

I've known these two fellas quite awhile. They were born with bits and pieces of the same assemblage of virtual DNA as a dozen or so flesh and blood men I've known over the years with, I suppose, a few bits my own psyche thrown in. They show up in my stories every now and then, because I like them. Honest, hard-working, loyal and unpretentious, they're as common as the good earth, and they make me laugh. I'm hoping maybe this little story will give you some of that, too.
 

Driving down County Road 52 the old rancher could see his young friend had gotten himself into another pickle, so he braked the one-ton and wheeled it onto the gravel driveway leading the fifty yards up to the mobile home.

"What is it you're doing, Punch?" White Oxley asked. He'd shut the truck down and stepped out, not expecting a simple answer. Punch's big blonde retriever and whatsit mix, Doolittle, ambled over to give the rancher a "howdy" sniff and get an ear scratch.

White stood looking up at his friend perched atop a ladder leaning none too securely against the roof line of the trailer. He lifted his Resistol straw off his head to better block the low afternoon sun. In his left hand Punch held a wad of green wires with little protruding light bulbs while he tried with the other to extract one end of the string. He glanced down at White.

"Well, what's it look like I'm doing?" He spoke with irritation, returning his attention to the snaggle of wire and lights.

"My first thought was some kind of alien life-form had landed on your roof, and you'd got up there and nabbed it," White answered. "But then I seen it was some kind of electrical thing, so I figured you'd come up with a peculiar sort of suicide attempt. I'm just here to talk you down, son."

"No, it ain't none of that," Punch said, not seeing the humor. "I's hanging these dang Christmas lights for Jo Lynn."

"Well, I ain't no expert on hanging Christmas lights, like you," White said. "But wouldn't it be more simpler and smarter to untangle that string of lights on the ground instead of up on that ladder?"

Punch lay the wad of lights on the flat roof, and looked up at the sky. He sighed loudly. "Yes, it would," he answered. "I just didn't think it'd be this complicated when I started. I's in a hurry to get back to my ballgame."

White pictured the scene: Punch had done something stupid, had got Jo Lynn mad at him again, and

was trying to make up for it by agreeing to do any blame thing she asked him. This happened on a pretty regular basis. Over the years, White'd come to think Jo Lynn used this tactic regular to get things done around the place.

"Well, why don't you come on down from there before you break your fool neck, and I'll help you get all that straightened out."

Once Punch descended, they moved to the vinyl picnic table sitting in the yard. Doolittle tagged along. White straddled a bench and sat, took the ball of lights and started working on it. Punch and the dog watched, the man mildly impressed with his friend's patience and tenacity with the task.

"I don't understand why Jo Lynn wants them lights up, anyway," Punch said.

"It's festive," White said, pulling on a loop of wire. "Your women like festive. Makes 'em feel like things look better'n they actually are. That's why they watch all them TV shows about weddin's and such."

Punch took about a half minute to consider all that. "I got to get her a Christmas present. I ain't done that yet. You got your wife anything yet?" he asked.

"Yep," White answered.

"What'd you get her?"

"Something nice; something she won't expect."

"I ask Jo Lynn what she wanted and she said," Punch switched to a mocking falsetto voice. "Oh nothing really. I got everthing I need." Doolittle perked his ears.

"Uh huh. You know that's a test."

"A test?"

"Yessir, when they tell you they don't really want nothin' for Christmas, it's their way of seein' what you'll come up with. And then they'll look at what you do end up gettin' 'em on your own to determine your devotion to them, one way or t'other."

"Do what? Why, holy cow, it's just a dang Christmas present."

"I know, I know. But your women look at things different than you and me. We see Christmas presents as merely something that'll come in handy, like a new compound bow or a set of socket wrenches or a flat screen TV for the garage. They, on the other hand, take them as a measure for the depth of your relationship."

"No way," Punch said, shaking his head and grinning back at White thinking this was another one of his friend's jokes. White loved to pull his leg. Doolittle decided to take a little nap.

"I'm dead serious, boy. You got to think long and hard before you decide what to give 'em, they take that into account, too. Like I said, needs to be something nice, not necessarily practical, and something she won't expect."

Punch nodded, scrunching his brow as he submerged deep in thought. After a bit, he snapped his fingers, his face brightened. "I got just the thing. I'm going to get her a bus ticket to go visit her momma for a month. She won't expect that."

The old cowboy looked at his friend, then down at Doolittle, who raised his head and looked back, apparently laughing. White unloosed the last tangle in the string of lights and stood. "Let's get these here lights hung up, son. I 'spect I'll have to come back in May to help you take 'em back down."

Phil Truman is the author of the award-winning historical western novel,  Red Lands Outlaw, the Ballad of Henry Starr;  a sports inspirational about small town schoolboy football entitled GAME, an American Novel; and Treasure Kills, a mystery adventure in a small town.

Phil's new fiction series, West of the Dead Line, the Complete Series, is available in electronic format at Amazon.com. Set in Indian Territory, the collection of short srories is based on the life and times of Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves.

 

My Foe and Friend Had Crossed the River

by Phil Truman

In my post last month, Blood and Treasure at Champion Hill, I wrote about two of my great grandfathers fighting on opposing sides in that horrific Civil War battle near Vicksburg, Mississippi. Several years ago, while at a visitors center at the site of the Champion Hill battleground, my brother Gary discovered a testimonial written by a soldier who'd fought in that conflict. The man had penned it in his later years as part of his memoirs. This written witness, both graphic and poignant, recounts a seventeen-year-old boy's ordeal and survival in the encounter. The account has appeared in several books written about the Civil War, including one published by the Smithsonian. The man who wrote it was known as "Rovin' Bill," a tramp and a vagabond who died in poverty in 1921 at an old soldiers' home in Indiana. He was my maternal grandmother's estranged father. Here is a part of that testimony:

From the memoirs of William Aspinwall, Co. H, 47^th Indiana: 

The last words I remember hearing before being shot were uttered by some of our officers who were begging our men to fall back as the rebels were flanking us.

Young Union Soldier

As I had my gun up to my shoulder three buck shots, coming from the right flank, struck me in the right shoulder. My arm fell helpless by my side, and not more than a second afterward a Minie ball plowed across the top of my head cutting the scalp and chipping the skull, and cutting the hair across the head as neatly as it could have been done with a sharp pair of shears. I fell to the ground and our orderly sergeant, J.W. Whitmore, said I bounced around like a chicken with its head cut off. John E. Sturgis, one of our sergeants, says he saw five of us boys of our company all wallowing around together in our own blood like stuck hogs.

When I came to my senses, I was inside the rebel line, the bullets falling around me like hail. 

It was some little time before I could make out my surroundings. A Confederate officer came and sat down on a little bank of earth beside me. He looked at the wound in my head and said, “My boy, I am afraid you are done for.” He gave me a drink of water out of his canteen, raising my head very gently with one hand, so I could drink. He asked me what state I was from. I replied, “Indiana.” I will never forget his kindness. 

After he left me, I got up and started towards our lines, passing the retreating Johnnies, and almost rubbing clothes with them. Prison being constantly in my mind, I preferred death to going there. I succeeded in getting into our lines and finding my captain, who got me in an ambulance and I was taken to the hospital which was in a corn field. 

Artist Depiction of the Battle at Champion Hill

The wounded were made as comfortable as possible under shades made by driving forked poles out from the woods in the ground across which poles were laid and these covered with brush. By this means the boys were protected from the hot sun. There were rows of the wounded with aisles between, and the surgeons worked on their rude dissecting tables in these aisles. What horrible sights and what pitiful cries and groans. I never want to experience it again…I merely walked through the hospital and after that I was content to stay on the outside, for I could not endure to witness the misery of my comrades. Many a noble boy of my regiment would never see mother or home again; their bones were to be left on the battleground of Champion Hill.

In the evening some of my comrades brought me blankets, doing without themselves, and made me a bed in a fence corner outside of the hospital. In a little while a Confederate soldier came along. He had been shot somewhere in the bowels and was in great pain. I said, “Here, partner, I will share my bed with you.” And he laid down beside me. 

He told me that he was from Savannah, Georgia, and that he could not get well. He wanted me to write to his wife and children and gave me a card with their address.

I was to tell them that I had seen him and what had become of their beloved husband and father. Being weak and exhausted from the loss of blood, I dozed off to sleep and left him talking to me. In a little while I awoke and spoke to him two or three times, but he did not answer. I put my hand over on his face; he was cold in death. My foe and friend had crossed the river. 

"My Foe and Friend..."

I laid there with him until daylight, then found a sergeant who dressed my wounds and a comrade who wrote two letters for me, one to my mother in Bluffton, Indiana, and one to this poor Confederate’s family. I took the letter over to the Confederate hospital which was a short distance from ours in an adjoining cornfield. They had no brush sheds. The poor fellows were laying around between the corn rows and there was a large number of them. I found a Confederate officer and gave him the letter. He said I could rest assured that he would see to it that the dead soldier’s family got the letter and he complimented me on my kindness. 

A number of ladies had assembled from the surrounding towns and country waiting on the Confederate wounded and they looked daggers at me, not a one of them spoke to me. They did not like the color of my blood-splattered uniform.

Phil Truman is the author of the award-winning historical western novel,  Red Lands Outlaw, the Ballad of Henry Starr;  a sports inspirational about small town schoolboy football entitled GAME, an American Novel; and Treasure Kills, a mystery adventure in a small town.

Phil's new fiction series, West of the Dead Line, the Complete Series, is available in electronic format at Amazon.com. Set in Indian Territory, the collection of short srories is based on the life and times of Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves.

Blood and Treasure at Champion's Hill

by Phil Truman

"Each person is born to one possession which out-values all his others: his last breath." - Mark Twain

I'm dang lucky to be here.

A hundred and fifty-one years ago two great opposing armies converged east of Vicksburg, Mississippi on a farm owned by Sid and Matilda Champion. The leader of one army was Major General Ulysses S. Grant; the other was Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton.

One of the fiercest and bloodiest battles of the American Civil War took place there when Confederate artillery, positioned atop a no-name bald hill on that farm, fired down on part of the Union's 32,000 man advance. The prize for one army was the seizure of the Confederate supply stronghold at Vicksburg; the desperate intent of the other was to prevent it.

The battle raged throughout the day of May 16, 1863 ending in a decisive Union tactical victory and a Confederate retreat to Vicksburg. 

Total American casualties at the Battle of Champion's (or Champion) Hill, as it came to be called, exceeded 6,200.

1st Missouri at Champion's Hill (reinactment)

Where my luck comes in is that two of my great-grandfathers, one paternal and one maternal, fought against each other at Champion's Hill and survived. Daniel McKnight, my dad's mother's father, was a private in the Confederate's 1st Missouri Brigade. My mother's granddad, William Aspinwall--her mother's father, was an infantryman with the 47th Indiana.

All we know about Dan McKnight is that he was a Methodist preacher from Missouri. Sometime after my grandmother Minnie Belle was born in 1871, widower Daniel loaded up his family in Springfield and trundled the wagons off to north Texas. He died down there, leaving my grandmother and her sister orphaned.

Bill Aspinwall was 17 when he charged those Confederate lines in Mississippi. He was wounded there, too, by a non-fatal head shot. 

He'd had other wounds, it was said, from other battles, and may have come home from the war with

Flag of the 47th Indiana

what was called the "army disease"- an addiction to morphine which was commonly sent home with wounded soldiers for the relief of pain. He eventually wandered down to Indian Territory where he met and married my great grandmother, Sarah Jane. My grandmother, Georgia Lee, born in 1881,was their only child.

But Bill was a mean and abusive man, no doubt due to his alcohol and drug use, and I'm sure the unconsidered and unheard of effects of PTSD. However, extended families still stuck pretty close together back then, and Sarah Jane's kin ran Bill off.

Long after my grandmother Georgia Lee's death, a letter turned up tucked away in an old trunk of hers.

Poignantly written by Bill, the letter was addressed to Sarah Jane and his young daughter.

He'd written about how he'd sobered up and straightened himself out, had a steady job, how he missed them and wished to God they could live together as a family again, he promised he'd be a better husband and father. But it never happened. Last they knew, Grandmother once said, he'd died in an old soldiers' home up in Sedalia, Missouri...probably alone.

The likelihood that Dan and Bill came face-to-face in combat isn't high; there were a combined 54,000 troops in and around Champion Hill. Still, they were both engaged in the close-quarter combat, and it's not totally out of the question. In my own imagination, it was Dan's Minie ball that

creased Bill's skull. In either case he survived because it knocked him cold, and those fighting

hand-to-hand around him thought him dead. We had no mention of any wounds Dan might've received in the battle and the subsequent siege at Vicksburg, only that he survived.

1947 - Me (bottom left) & my Siblings

I guess all of us could say many various turns of fate kept our lines alive to eventual existence. Could be one of my ancestors side-stepped a charging mastodon, or perhaps dodged the thrust of a Roman gladius, and maybe many other such happenings. The difference here is I can trace the facts that two of my ancestors met on a battlefield; two men, had either of whose lives been snuffed out, I wouldn't be here to write about it.

My grandmother Minnie Belle McKnight Truman had four children; my dad was the youngest. My grandmother Georgia Lee Aspinwall Moore gave birth to ten; my mother was her fifth.

Like most of my countrymen, having the knowledge that our family's history, down to the kernel of our existence, is woven into the ragged and worn fabric of this nation, gives me one more sturdy reason to be proud to call myself an American.

Phil Truman is the author of the award-winning historical western novel,  Red Lands Outlaw, the Ballad of Henry Starr;  a sports inspirational about small town schoolboy football entitled GAME, an American Novel; and Treasure Kills (formerly Legends of Tsalagee), a mystery/adventure in a small town.

His eight story fiction series based the life and times of Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves, and put together in a volume called West of the Dead Line, will be available in electronic format in the Fall of 2014.

The Bill & Bill Show with a Heck of an Ending

 by Phil Truman

A man once said to me, "Destiny ain't about chance, son; it's about choice." 

He'd spoken that jewel after I'd made a particularly stupid mistake in my young life. At the time I had to think on that one for a spell, but my long and winding journey since has taught me it's true enough for the most part.

You take, for example the outlaw Bill Doolin. Doolin made a long string of bad choices to complete his destiny, but in December of 1895 if he hadn't decided to visit a particular spa for a hot mineral bath in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, maybe he wouldn't have been gunned down near Lawton, Indian Territory in August, 1896.

In the spring of 1895 Doolin and his gang had robbed a train cutting through the I.T. and had gotten away with a $50,000 army payroll. Rumor had it that Bill had in mind to retire after that big haul to spend more time with his young wife and son. But first he wanted to take a sojourn to the reputed Eureka Springs therapeutic baths to soothe some residual aches and pains from old gunshot wounds he'd collected over the years.

Another man of destiny, Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Tilghman, had been in pursuit of Doolin for some time, and getting wind of the outlaw gone off to Eureka, followed up on the lead. But no sense traveling all that way, Tilghman must've thought, without partaking in one of the famous hot baths himself, so that's what he decided to do, Bill Doolin could wait. When he entered the bathhouse he was surprised to see Doolin in another room sitting on a couch reading a newspaper. Well, no time like the present.

The lawman pulled his Peacemaker and approached Doolin rapidly, pointing the revolver at the reclining outlaw's ear. "Bill Doolin," Tilghman announced. "You're under arrest."

Startled, the outlaw started for his own gun under his coat, but Tilghman grabbed Doolin's sleeve pulling it tight and preventing the fugitive from unbuttoning his coat to get to his gun. Tilghman held him there and Doolin continued to resist until the marshal allowed as how he'd go ahead and blow Bill's brains out if he didn't give it up. Doolin complied.

Tilghman telegraphed back to the Oklahoma Territory capital of Guthrie that he'd captured Bill Doolin and was bringing him in. Heck Thomas and several other deputy marshals met Tilghman and his prisoner at the Guthrie train station. Word had gotten out about Doolin's capture, so a crowd of about 2,000 crowded around the depot and along the streets to get a glimpse of the renowned outlaw. Many citizens stopped by the marshal's office that afternoon to meet Doolin and congratulate Tilghman.

Bill Doolin

Nobody ever figured the notorious Bill Doolin would ever be brought in alive, but if anybody could it'd be one of the three "Oklahoma Guardsmen" as the deputies were known--Tilghman, Chris Madsen, and Heck Thomas. Later that same evening Doolin was taken to the finest restaurant and hotel in Guthrie for dinner then returned to his jail cell.

During the months' long stay in the Guthrie jail awaiting trial, Doolin's celebrity status wore off, as did the outlaw's patience with being locked up. In June of 1896 an old gang mate of his, "Dynamite Dick" Clifton, was brought in and became Doolin's cellmate. The two started hatching a plan for an escape, and in July Bill feigned an illness and when he got to the infirmary, stripped the guard of his firearm, broke out his pard Dynamite Dick along with seven other inmates, and took off.

The jailbreak had occurred on Deputy Thomas' watch, which he apparently took personal, making it his mission to haul Doolin back to the Territory capital jail dead or alive.

By late August word came around that Doolin was spotted in the vicinity of his father-in-law's store in Lawton down near Ft. Sill. Thomas formed a posse and lit a shuck southward.

On the evening of August 24th, some young boys who knew Doolin told him they'd come across a group of lawmen camping outside of town, and one of them was asking if they knew the whereabouts of Bill. Around midnight Doolin saddled his horse and made provisions for a long ride. He led his horse down a quiet moonlit lane wary and jumpy at every shadow. He'd armed himself with two pistols; he carried a Winchester.

Heck Thomas

Deputy Heck Thomas stood behind a tree in the dark shadows at the edge of the lane, holding a 10-gauge coach gun, awaiting Doolin's approach. His men were spread out on both sides.

"Stop right there, Doolin," Thomas shouted. "U.S. Marshals, you're under arrest."

Another deputy across the road shouted, "Put your hands up, you're surrounded."

Doolin fired his rifle wildly in Thomas' direction then drew a pistol aiming toward the other voice. But before he could get off that second shot, Thomas let loose with the shotgun, the double aught slugs striking Doolin in the chest. A fusillade from the possemen followed, but Heck Thomas' buckshot had been sufficient. The bullet-riddled body of the outlaw Bill Doolin lay dead in the moonlight, the last choice made to reach his destiny.

Phil Truman is the author of the award-winning historical western novel,  Red Lands Outlaw, the Ballad of Henry Starr;  a sports inspirational about small town schoolboy football entitled GAME, an American Novel; and Treasure Kills (formerly Legends of Tsalagee), a mystery/adventure in a small town.

He's currently working on a series of western shorts put together in a volume called West of the Dead Line, the first five stories of which are available on Amazon in e-format only for 99 cents each. Volume I - eight stories in all - will be available in electronic format in the Fall of 2014.

Redemption along the Red

by Phil Truman

Continuing with the West of the Dead Line series, Episode 4 came out early last month.

What follows is an excerpt from #4, "Redemption along the Red."

Here's the setup:

Bass Reeves, still living among the Creek and Cherokee in 1875 Indian Territory, has settled in as a guide and tracker for lawmen out of Fort Smith, Arkansas who come into the Territory to hunt down wanted felons. During the course of this particular trip, Reeves takes the opportunity to rescue his mother, sister, wife and children from down in north Texas. On the land of his old master, he must face a nemesis from his past to fight for his family’s freedom. Escaping across the Red River and back into Indian Territory, Bass and his family are caught in the path of a deadly storm. In its wake he finds redemption for a sin from his past. 

Riders approaching brought Bass to the cabin door. As he pulled a suspender strap over his left shoulder, he picked up the Henry with his right hand, jacked a .44 cartridge into the rifle’s chamber, and stepped outside.

The two men pulled up twenty feet from the cabin’s front, staying in the saddle when they saw Reeves with the rifle. One was a stout man with a drooping brown mustache covering both his lips. The other was lean and clean-faced, sat taller in his saddle than his companion. They were young men, younger than Bass. Both wore tin badges on their shirt fronts.

“M’name’s LeFlore,” the stout one said. “This here’s Heck Bruner. We’re deputy U.S. marshals.”

“Charlie LeFlore? Believe I heard of you,” Bass said. “Don’t believe I know Mister Bruner.” He pointed the barrel of the Henry toward the ground, un-cocking the hammer with a thumb. His smile let the men know they weren’t in any immediate danger.

“We heard of you, too, Reeves. That’s why we come lookin’ for you,” LeFlore said. “Sam Sixkiller tells us you could track a dead man straight into hell.”

Bass laughed a little. “Well, some leave more sign than others, but if Sam said it, I ’spect it’s true. You needin’ a tracker, are ya?”

“We’re needin’ to go down into Chickasaw land to find a man shot and kilt a woman. There’s a couple whiskey runners we’d like to round up, too, while we’re down there. They’s said to be south of Anadarko, down around the Red. Sam says you know the land.”

“Red River country, huh? Where you’re talking about is Kiowa and Comanche land, out west of the Dead Line.”

Reeves paused to let that sink in. Then he continued. “Ain’t many men your side of the law likes to go out there.”

The deputies nodded and glanced at one another, keeping silent.

“I take it this man what kilt that woman ain’t Indin, or was she a white woman?”

“Naw, he’s a white man name of Bill Pollcott. I believe she were Choctaw, a whore. He beat her up and choked her dead when he woke and caught her stealin’ from his poke. Still, law says you can’t go around killing women, even thievin’ whores.”

“Believe that to be true enough. I require five dollars a day, plus expenses,” Bass said. 

LeFlore nodded. “Court’ll pay the goin’ rate, I reckon.”

"One of the men you lookin’ for Dick Glass?”

“We ain’t got a writ for him, but I believe if we’s to meet up with him, we’d want to take him in,” LaFlore said.

“He’s likely out that way. We meet up with Dick Glass, there’s a few things I’d like to discuss with him before you arrest him.”

“What would that be?”

“He oncest shot a friend of mine, stole somethin’ of ours. Another time he shot at me, but missed and kilt a little boy. I’d like to see if I could get restitution.”

The deputies looked at one another, knowing what Bass implied... 

Episode 5, "The Getaway of Cross-eyed Jack Dugan," is set to be released this month.  We'll take a glimpse at it in my September post. If you haven't had a chance to review the first three episodes, you can find them here:
#1 - Bringing in Pike Cudgo
#2 - Freed Men
#3 - Runaway

Phil Truman is the author of the award-winning historical western novel,  Red Lands Outlaw, the Ballad of Henry Starr;  a sports inspirational about small town schoolboy football entitled GAME, an American Novel; and Treasure Kills (formerly Legends of Tsalagee), a mystery/adventure in a small town. 

He's currently working on a series of western shorts put together in a volume called West of the Dead Line, the first four stories of which are available at Amazon in e-format only for 99 cents each. Volume I - six stories in all - will be available in print and electronic format in the Fall of 2014. 

The Dusky Demon

by Phil Truman

Willie watched the big dogs work.

Willie M. "Bill" Pickett

The ten-year-old boy was riveted by their prowess. These mixed-breed bulldogs, fifty to sixty pounds of muscle, agility, speed, and fortitude,  would chase down a thundering thousand pound steer, leap fearlessly at the beast's face, and bring it to the ground with a clinching bite to the steers' lips holding it there until a cowboy could rope it.

Willie thought to himself, I bet I could do that. So he started practicing his own "bite 'em on the lip" technique on calves around the central Texas cattle ranch where he and his family lived and worked.

One of thirteen children born to former slave parents, Willie grew up learning the hard, gritty life of being a ranch hand. In spite of the prejudice and bigotry surrounding him, or maybe because of it, Willie developed himself into the hardest working and most skilled hand on the ranch. He could ride and rope with the best of them, better than most. But he went beyond. He came up with a skill no other cowboy had ever tried. He continued to perfect his "bulldogging" method eventually moving up to full grown cows and the longhorn steers which roamed the mesquite bush country. It was an astounding skill no one else could or would master.

Willie married in 1890 and settled in Taylor, Texas located some thirty-five miles northeast of Austin, and twenty miles due east of Round Rock. That's where he and Maggie began their family of nine children, and partnered with some of his brothers in a start-up business called Pickett Brothers Bronco Busters and Rough Riders Association. Their handbills stated:

"We ride and break all wild horses with much care. Good treatment to all animals. Perfect satisfaction guaranteed.

Catching and taming wild cattle a specialty."

Bill Picket 'bulldogging'

A rancher-client of the Picketts was so amazed with Willie's—now called Bill—steer lip-biting technique that he suggested Bill put on demonstrations at county fairs, and arranged for him to do so at several. The crowds were dumbstruck. The fair circuit and Bill's "act" became a regular part of the Pickett Brothers' business. In 1903 he met a promoter named Dave "Mister Cowboy" McClure, who told Bill he could take him to the next level. 

McClure promptly got Pickett bookings at some of the biggest rodeos in the ranching states. There was only one problem: blacks were barred from entering most rodeo contests. But being a savvy showman, McClure focused on Pickett's mixed-blood heritage (Cherokee, Caucasian, Negro) and billed him as "The Dusky Demon." Apparently it worked, as Bill went on to become a rage in the arenas of rodeo.

In 1905 Joe Miller, the eldest and managing brother of the vast Miller Bros. 101 Ranch in  northern Oklahoma, was putting together the first of his Wild West shows, a spectacle which would feature "five hundred cowboys, a thousand Indians, hundreds of buffalo, fancy riding, roping and shooting, and the Apache chief Geronimo." Joe heard about Bill Pickett, and dispatched little brother Zack to the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show where Pickett was performing.

Zack met up with Bill's new manager, Guy "Cheyenne Bill" Weadick, a trick rope artist from Alberta, Canada, who in 1912 would establish the Calgary Stampede. But in 1905 Zack Miller struck a deal with Weadick and Pickett to perform for the 101 Ranch Wild West Show.

In his Western Heritage and Spur Award winning book, The Real Wild West, Michael Wallis describes Bill Pickett's performance at the inaugural event before a crowd of 65,000:

The audience gasped as a thousand-pound steer charged into the arena, pursued by a mounted hazer whose task was to keep the critter on a straight path in front of the grandstand. From out of nowhere Bill Pickett appeared. Astride his bay horse named Spradley, the bulldogger was later described as being "hard and tough as whalebone."

Pickett coaxed the horse forward. In an instant, they were at full gallop and he was sliding off off Spradley onto the huge steer's back. He grabbed a flashing horn in each hand, dug his boots into the earth, and twisted the steer's neck until its head was turned upward. Pickett's teeth gnashed onto steer's lip. The cowboy lifted his hands in the air and gave his body a twist. The steer fell on its side and lay perfectly quiet as Pickett rendered it helpless. The crowd jumped to its feet, as if one body. The applause was said to be deafening.

Most who knew and worked with him agree that Willie M. "Bill" Pickett, the inventor of the rodeo event of Bulldoggin', was one of the greatest American "sweat and dirt" cowboys that ever sat a saddle or looped a reata. His lip-biting technique isn't used in the modern rodeo event of steer wrestling, but Bill Pickett's emulation of the big Texas ranch dogs' method of bringing down beeves gave the event its name.

Phil Truman is the author of the award-winning historical western novel,  Red Lands Outlaw, the Ballad of Henry Starr;  a sports inspirational about small town schoolboy football entitled GAME, an American Novel; and Treasure Kills (formerly Legends of Tsalagee), a mystery/adventure in a small town. 

He's currently working on a series of western shorts put together in a volume called West of the Dead Line, the first four stories of which are available at Amazon in e-format only for 99 cents each. Volume I - six stories in all - will be available in print and electronic format in the Fall of 2014.  

The Dead Line

 by Phil Truman

The Dead Line, as it came to be called, was a railroad, the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas, cutting across the middle of Indian Territory.

Missouri, Kansas, & Texas RR

It ran straight south from Caldwell, Kansas to Fort Reno, I.T., then on down through the Cheyenne and Comanche and Kiowa lands, crossing the Red River into Bowie, Texas. It was not only a line on a map, but a physical demarcation. West of it there was no law, only outlaws. On trails out there, notes would be put up on trees and posts, sort of reverse wanted posters, letting lawmen - usually those Federal marshals up from Texas or over from Arkansas - know they’d be killed if they continued their pursuits west of the Dead Line.

Throughout the 225 year history of the U.S. Marshals Service, over 200 deputies have been killed in the line of duty. Of those, more than 120 lost their lives in the Indian and Oklahoma Territories between 1850 and Oklahoma statehood in 1907.

Relic of the MKT

In the storied annals of the American West, no place comes close to matching the dangers and mortality these Federal officers faced doing their jobs. Their courage, resolve, and dedication to duty were beyond reproach...for the most part. Those who survived became titans in the legends of the West.

The stories in this collection I call West of the Dead Line are fiction, but the encounters these lawmen faced, and The Dead Line, were not.

This first volume - seven are written, about five more are sketched out - involves tales centering around Bass Reeves, an illiterate ex-slave, adopted Creek Indian, scout for the Federal marshals, and eventually a Deputy U.S. Marshal himself, perhaps the best there ever was. In his 32 years as a Federal peace officer in the Indian Territory and young state of Oklahoma Reeves brought in over 3,000 outlaws to the Federal Court in Fort Smith, Arkansas, both dead and alive, one of whom was his own son wanted for murder.

So here are story lines and excepts from the first two stories in Volume I:

#1 - Bringing in Pike Cudgo

After the cold-blooded murder of two lawmen, Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves, along with his colleagues, Deputy Heck Thomas and Posseman Jud Coldstone, pursue a ruthless Seminole “freedman” into the harsh country of the Wichita Mountains. Aided by a band of Cheyenne hunters, Reeves and his allies seek to bring the outlaw Pike Cudgo to justice. 

Deputy Marshal Bynum P. Nelson felt surprise right before he died. He had a fraction of a second to be pissed, but he was mostly surprised. It never occurred to him that Pike Cudgo would walk right up to him, and stick that eight inch blade into the left side of his neck. He knew the Seminole freedman was a mean and dangerous sumbitch, but he’d been caught off-guard by Cudgo’s cordiality. It was his last mistake.

“You Deputy Nelson?” the man asked. He came walking up to him out of the night shadows right there on the main street of Waurika, smiling like they were at a church social, and he was about to introduce himself. “Your man, Maha, said you’s lookin’ for me.”

He started to stick his hand out as if to offer a handshake, but instead slid a bone-handled Boulder knife out of his coat sleeve and stabbed it into Nelson’s neck, right between two vertebrae, severing the lawman’s spinal cord. The surprise came up in Nelson’s brain the second he caught a glint of the raised blade, but that split-second was all he had as the emotion died right along with the rest of him that fatal instant there on the night streets of Waurika, I.T. in 1889. 

Cudgo embraced the slumping body of Nelson while he jerked the knife out of the lawman’s neck, then let the dead weight of him drop to the dirt street. Cudgo wiped the blade on a faded red bandana that hung from his belt, standing there looking around. His cruel black eyes searched for anyone watching; anyone he thought might care about what he’d just done, anyone else he might have to take care of. The expression on his mean black face was a mask of cold-blooded dispassion. Human life had no value to Pike Cudgo, except his own.

#2 - Freed Men

The young slave Bass Reeves is captured by a Yankee spy during the Civil War campaign in Arkansas which ended at the Battle of Pea Ridge. Set free by his captor, Bass wanders into the encampment of the 2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles of the Southern Army whose leader presses the lost slave to stand and fight with them. Battling shoulder-to-shoulder with the Cherokee warriors during the fierce combat, Bass’s life is forever changed in a way he never before imagined. 

“Where you from, Yank?” Bass asked. 

His captor stared at Reeves squarely before looking into the fire. “Kansas, mostly,” he said. “Rode with General Lane’s Jayhawkers. He didn’t much cotton to secessionists… or slave owners. Called himself an ‘abolitionist.’”

“That why you rode with him? You uh…ab-bol-lishnest?”

The Yankee threw back his head and laughed. He stood and walked out to the edge of the firelight to take his own piss, chuckling to himself as he did so.

When he came back to the fire, he sat again opposite Reeves, stirred the coals with a stick, threw on another piece of wood. “You even know what that means, boy? Abolitionist?"

“Sho’ I does,” Bass answered, a little indignant. “It mean freein’ slaves.”

“Seems to me the only freed men is the dead ones,” his captor said. He paused to stir the fire some more, looked at Bass. “I’ve personally freed a few myself,” he said with a grin and a wink.

“Naw, I rode with Lane because he offered me the job,” he continued. “Pay wasn’t much, but it kept me out of jail. I needed that more than money at the time.

Battle of Pea Ridge

“Still, sayin’ it’s legal to own a man don’t seem right to me. Sure as hell don’t believe I’d put up with anyone claimin’ they owned me.”

Silence fell between the pair again. The haunting sound of a harmonica drifted in with the cold night air. Men’s voices echoed through the black forest; voices in calm conversation and some laughter, distant but clear like coming across a still river at night.

”Whas yo name, then?” Bass asked. Another long pause followed before the Yankee answered.

“I got several names. Go by Haycock in this here army, William Haycock. Back in Kansas some folks called me ‘Wild Bill.’ Called me that because of the shape of my nose, made fun of how it swoops out sorta like a duck’s bill. I didn’t much like it at first, made a few callin’ me that pay. But now I believe I like it…yes sir, believe I do. You can call me Wild Bill.”

Bass nodded, and grinned back at the man. “Wild Bill,” he repeated.

“You realize I’m only telling you this ’cause you’ll be dead before sundown tomorrow.”

Bass looked cold-eyed at Haycock. “You gone kill me, Wild Bill?” he asked.

Haycock laughed again. “Naw, I ain’t gonna kill you, Bass. I’m gonna let you go. But boys see a nigger runnin’ free through these here woods, I figure one side or t’other’s bound to shoot your ass. Ain’t that what we’re fightin’ for? To set your likes free?” He cocked an eyebrow and grinned at his captive.

Bass stared back at Haycock. After a bit, he said to him, “You lets me go, Wild Bill, how you know I ain’t finds myself a gun an’ frees yo’ ass?” 

The Yankee continued to grin back at Bass. After a few seconds Haycock began to sputter through his teeth, then his chest bucked. His eyes squinted as snorts of laughter welled up from his gut and burst out his mouth.

You can get your copy of the West of the Dead Line stories  by clicking on the titles above. Phil has also authored three other novels: the award-winning historical western novel,  Red Lands Outlaw, the Ballad of Henry Starr;  a sports inspirational about small town schoolboy football entitled GAME, an American Novel; and Treasure Kills (formerly Legends of Tsalagee), a mystery/adventure in a small town.