Heart Of A Lawman
By
Darrel Bird
Copyright 2010 by Darrel Bird
Heart of a Lawman
On that Friday evening, seventeen-year-old John Shay fed the pair of mules and turned them out to pasture for the last time. It was the sixth of March, 1874. The trees were greening in the mountains of Kentucky, where the Shay farm lay a few miles east of Louisville. He gave each mule a pat, and a little treat of sugar.
John was five foot nine inches tall, and he had begun to put on weight. He was quick of movement, and hardened from a life of farming.
He turned, closed the wooden gate, and headed toward the house. His grandpa was nodding on the back porch, and John gave him a shake as he walked past.
“Wake up, Grandpa, and come inside.”
His grandpa snorted and came awake. He was getting feeble. John knew it would be the last evening he would be with the old man.
His father was seated in the living room reading his Bible, and he looked up as John and his grandpa came into the room.
His mother came in from one of the bedrooms and pulled off her apron, an apron she had worn as far back as John could remember. Her worn face and graying hair spoke of long hours of hard work on the Kentucky hill farm. His mother never said much when the men folk gathered in the living room to talk about the day’s events. But she listened intently, and she put up with no foolishness from them.
John’s father carefully closed his Bible, laid it on the table beside him, and said, “Did you git that field plowed, John?”
“I got ‘er plowed, Pap.”
“You goin’ to leave in tha mornin’?”
“Soon as it comes light.”
“I reckon I won’t be seein’ you agin, Appie,” his grandfather said, looking at him sadly. His grandpa had called him that since the time John, then only six years old, had eaten too many green apples, and had had to run for the outhouse all night long, and all the next day.
“You never know, Pa. You might live to be a hunnert and fourteen,” John’s father remarked.
John knew that his grandfather was probably right, but he felt he had to go. He just had to see the western lands. His future was there.
He looked over at his mother and saw a tear in her eye. He dreaded leaving her most of all – his mother who had nurtured him, taught him to read and write, and to believe in the Good Book. Her nurturing had instilled in him a sense of kindness, fairness, and justice.
John looked down at the calluses on his big hands, and at his protruding knuckles caused by working long, hard hours on the little Kentucky farm. The Shays had eked out a living on the farm for fifty years. They had carved it out of the wilderness with their own hands. John had never shirked his duty, but rather always gave his best. Most evenings they talked of farming and pasture, but this night they talked of John’s leaving.
“I’m giving you the old mare, John,” his father spoke. “But you know she won’t stand up to much hard riding.”
“I know that, Pa. You sure about me taking her?”
“I’m sure, Son. You got a right to more than that old horse, but she’s all we got ta give ye, boy.”
His mother said nothing as she got up to go into her bedroom. She came out with a bundle wrapped in a cloth, and she handed it to John. It was a pair of new buckskins; a pair of moccasins was sitting neatly atop them.
John looked with awe at the tan buckskin shirt and pants with the long tassels running down each side. “When did you make those, Ma?” he asked.
“Never you mind, Son. I won’t be takin’ no credit fer them buckskins, seein’ I didn’t shoot them deer thet wore ’em.” His mother was like that; she would never take credit for what she did. But John knew that she had spent many hours tanning and softening the deer hides.
“Try ’em on boy! Let’s see ye in ’em,” said his grandpa, as he spat a long stream into the fireplace.
“Grandpa, how many times have I told you not to spit in thet far place?” his mother grumbled at the old man. “You shouldn’t chew thet tabbaccer in here no how!” she scolded. She ran the house, and the old man knew it.
I think he does that just to get her riled up, John thought, as he took the shirt and pants toward the bedroom to try them on. He came out a few minutes later wearing the buckskins, for them all to see. His grandfather let out a whoop as he walked back into the living room.
“Now you is a fine lookin’ specimen thar, boy, if I ever seen one.”
They talked late into the night, with his grandfather telling tales of first coming to Kentucky. After the talk was done, John went into the bedroom and took off the buckskin shirt and pants, folded them neatly on the foot of his bed, and went to sleep.
Before dawn the next morning, he was up and dressed in the new buckskins. He washed his face and hands in the pan on the back porch. John usually shaved with his dad’s straight razor, but this morning he did not. He didn’t have a razor of his own, and he figured he’d just let his beard grow, as he would do out on the trail. He wiped his face on a sacking towel and went into the kitchen.
His mother was busy making biscuits and frying eggs and fat back in the big iron skillet.
She came over to him and hugged him close to her. She looked up at her son with tears in her eyes.
“John, I want you to be careful out there where you’re a goin’, an’ I want you to get me a letter somehow to let me know how you are doin’.”
“I will, Ma,” John said as he hugged her and kissed her cheek, now wet with a tear. John knew this was a special time with his mother, as she would never carry on that way in front of the men folk. Even though she put on a stern front, John knew his mother’s heart was as soft as a golden summer’s dawn. She loved her God and her people as few loved.
As she went back to her cooking, John went into the living room and started packing his remaining things in his bedroll.
He went out and saddled the sleepy mare. “Whoa up, Rosie,” he said, as he yanked on the cinch band. The mare took a breath and he tightened the cinch some more. He led the mare to the porch and tied her to the rail as day began to break in the east. A sleepy whippoorwill gave its final call at the tree line.
He went into the kitchen and sat down at the table as his mother brought over the plates of eggs, bacon, and biscuits. His dad was already sitting at the table, and his grandpa was still asleep.
“Go wake yer grandpa, boy,” his dad said.
“You ought to just let him sleep. He’s all tard out from last night’s gab, and he is gettin’ real feeble,” his mother said, as she scooped three eggs onto John’s plate.
“Yeah, just let him sleep,” his dad said as an afterthought. “Pass me them biscuits.”
After breakfast was over and done, John walked out of the house, with his dad and mother trailing him out onto the front yard. The sky was beginning to glow a bright pink over the mountains to the east. John gathered the reins of the mare and stepped into the old saddle. The new buckskins felt soft to his backside on the slick saddle leather. His mother handed him a sack of food, and his dad reached up to shake his son’s hand.
“You be careful now, boy. I’ve done the best I kin by ye.” His dad went back into the house and came out with the fifty caliber Hawkins rifle that had hung over the fireplace since before John was born.
“Take this here gun, boy,” his dad said, handing him the rifle.
“I can’t take that, Pa!” John exclaimed, as he looked at his dad.
“Listen, boy, you are goin’ to need this where yer goin’, so don’t give me no back talk, you hear? We can make do with the thirty caliber just fine.”
John took the long rifle in his hands and laid it across his saddle. “That thirt
y caliber won’t bring down game like the fifty will, Pa.”
“She’ll still shoot, boy. And there ain’t much left to shoot at around here no how, so you just go on with you.”
John gave his parents a worried look as he gathered the reins and gave the old horse a gentle kick.
“Good bye, Pa, Ma,” and he turned the mare down the road that led west toward the Mississippi river and St. Louis.
He made about 15 miles that first day in the saddle, and stopped just before dark. He built up a fire with his flint and steel. It would be the first of many nights at a lonely campfire.
The next day he followed the Louisville road without incident. He hunted his food as he rode. The mare was not gun-shy, and he shot a deer from horseback. He stopped, built a fire, and began jerking the meat. The deer meat would last for many days.
He rode on through the town of Louisville, and stopped at the trading post just outside town. He used the few coins he had to buy salt, powder and lead, and a small iron cooking pot. He tied the pot to Rosie’s saddle, and tucked the salt in his bedroll.
A few days later John dropped out of the hills to the Mississippi Valley and the banks of the Mississippi River. When he came to the trail that would lead him to the ferry over to St. Louis, he stopped beside the track and made camp beside a little creek that made its way down to the river. The punky wood he used for his campfire put off a smoke that helped to keep away the swarms of mosquitoes.
John sat by the fire and wrapped his blanket around his shoulders against the evening chill. He thought about the past few days since he’d left his home, and homesickness nearly overtook him, but he fought it down.
“I got to get that outta my head,” he muttered. He knew that if he did not, it would keep him from thinking clearly. He washed his face and hair in the creek with the lye soap his mother had put into the sack, and he felt better. His mother had taught him to keep clean. As he finished washing up, he heard a voice coming from the direction of the trail.
“Hello tha fire!” And two men appeared through the trees. One was on foot, and the other was riding a good-looking stallion.
“Come on in,” John said.
The men came into the camp. The one on foot was short and ugly, and dressed in tattered homespun. He was missing three teeth in front behind his tobacco-stained beard, and he looked as if he hadn’t bathed in years. He wore a skinning knife on a leather belt, but didn’t appear to have any other weapons.
The other one had on a store-bought suit coat that didn’t match his pants, and a dirty hat. He was tall and had a rather good-looking face, though there was a long scar on his right cheek. Both of them looked seedy to John, but he said nothing as the men sat down across the fire from him.
The short one’s eyes kept shifting around the camp, from object to object. Then his gaze shifted to Rosie, hobbled a few feet away munching serenely at a tuft of grass.
John offered them the bag of jerky, and the men took it without speaking.
“Where you hailing