THE BANDIT QUEEN
By D. B. Woodling
Finalist in Uncharted Magazine’s 2024 Historical Fiction Contest
(copyrighted material)
She rode up as if a posse were in hot pursuit, coffee-colored curls bouncing about her shoulders, a single ostrich plume adorning her Stetson hat. Perched sidesaddle atop a spirited Palomino, a colorful expletive passed bowed lips while she straightened her petticoat, the hem soiled from crisscrossing the muddy ruts of Eufaula, Oklahoma, and not at a leisurely pace. From what I’d heard, there was nothing insipid about Belle Starr, and I could not believe my good fortune.
“What’s this feller’s business and what are y’all doing jawin’ up an afternoon with the likes of him?” she asked, directing a homicidal squint my way.
Admittedly, I cowered. Jesse James and Cole Younger shared a mustached smile, the kind of exchange due men who had escaped the rusty gates of hell and yearned to tell about it.
“He’s one of ’em dime novel writers,” Cole said as Belle maneuvered a slow slide down her mare’s flank. “Aims to write a piece about me and Jesse.”
“That right?” she said, one eyebrow disappearing into the brim of her hat. “What with Bass Reeves determined to put another notch in his gun belt, Judge Parker just itchin’ to see you two hang, you thought it one mighty fine idea to advertise your whereabouts?”
Jesse’s smile disappeared. From all accounts, that smile was about as rare as a drunkard in church come Sunday, and, for a variety of reasons, I was sorry to see it go. “Mind your place,” he said, his eyes pinching at the corners. “We didn’t get this far without knowin’ which direction to seat a saddle.”
Belle thrust her hip sideways, advertising a rhinestone-embellished holster. “Could be you’ve forgotten just what exactly a hideout is then, Jesse. And why it’s important you keep your head down about now. Because like I said, Bass–”
Jesse fished a tobacco pouch from a vest pocket. “I heard you the first time…it ain’t me who’s missin’ an ear. Reckon your man’s found his way home about now. Might be smart if you were to see after him.”
“My man’s dead,” Belle retorted. “That one I’m hitched to now is nothin’ but the sorriest of convenient circumstances.”
An Indian reservation seemed an unlikely choice for a hideout, and I mistakenly shared that opinion.
“That’s the idea, fool,” Jesse told me past a scowl.
I shifted my weight, then swiped sweat from my brow. Things had been going along just fine until Belle Starr showed up. I needed to find a way to put her at ease and quickly. “Miss Starr, I’d be much obliged if you’d share a tale or two of your exhilarating adventures.”
“It’s missus. I put a ring through three noses at last count, so I believe I’m due that consideration.”
I felt my face flush and toed the ground. “I didn’t intend any disrespect, ma’am.”
“Did y’all hear that?” she asked the two outlaws. “The storyteller referred to my lawbreakin’ as adventures.” She straightened her spine and her black velvet skirt. “I doubt those tasked with enforcin’ the law would be so inclined.”
Jesse grew fidgety, and I sensed any minute he’d plant one foot in a stirrup.
“Mr. James,” I said, determined to sabotage his retreat, “does your family ever grow weary of your absence?”
“What the hell do you think?” He jutted his chin in Belle’s direction. “That one there’s the chatterbox. Go on, loosen that lip, Belle. I never known you to be at a loss for words.”
“Please,” I prompted and spread my coat beneath the canopy of an accommodating walnut tree.
She cocked an eyebrow and appeared to debate my proposal. “First of all, Mr. Writer-Fella, let’s get somethin’ straight: I’ll take you up on that proposition of yours but only if you write what I say and only what I say. They’ll be no putting rouge on a pig or passin’ buffalo chips off as gold medallions. The truth and only the truth,” she said, poking me in the chest.
“Yes, ma’am. Whatever you say.” I settled across from her and put pen to paper. “When was your first encounter outside the law?”
“Because your business here is with these two, I would think you’d be more interested in how the three of us met.” Her gaze swept past Jesse and lingered on Cole.
My heart thudded against my chest, the question on the tip of my tongue. An inquiry most ungentlemanly and certain to offend, but the subject one of dubious contention among dime novel aficionados. I bit my lip in an effort to bolster my resolve. “Tattle around these parts is Mr. Younger here is your firstborn’s rightful daddy.”
Cole lurched forward with a clenched fist intended for my jaw just as Belle pushed me backward. Having yet to recover from my euphoric state of mind upon meeting the infamous Bandit Queen, I hadn’t given the trio ample opportunity to fully appreciate my unorthodox charm. Correctly deducing Mr. Younger’s fury, I prepared to create considerable distance.
“Simmer down, Cole,” Belle said and pressed a palm in his direction before turning pantheresque eyes on me. “Some things are no one else’s concern, storyteller. You got that?”
I nodded and sprang back to a seated position, keeping one eye trained on Younger. “No slight intended, Mrs. Starr.”
Jesse flipped the remains of his cigarette sideways and swaggered closer, the tip of one boot disconcertingly aligned with my family jewels. “You’d be wise to stay on his good side. Cole here has cut his teeth on his older brothers’ knuckles. I’ve suffered the misfortune of seein’ it with my own two eyes.”
“You heard of Quantrill’s Raiders?” Belle interrupted. She didn’t give me time to answer. “Cole, Jesse, and my brother Bud joined up with them. That’s how we met. Union troops shot Bud dead one night, and the gang scattered with a plan to regroup and retaliate. It weren’t till after the war that I met up with these boys again. And believe you me,” she said through a snort, “good ole Texas did not disappoint.”
“So it’s true you helped your husband rustle cattle there?”
She nodded. “Cattle. Horses. Gold. We commandeered just about everything folks hadn’t nailed down.”
I wrote furiously, stopping only long enough to swipe the drool pooling at one corner of my mouth. “And that’s when folks took to calling you the Bandit Queen?”
“Among other things,” Jesse piped up. Cole winked her way, and Belle batted her lashes in dramatic fashion.
“How’d you come to be here, in Oklahoma?” I asked.
“A sniveling coward wantin’ to make a name for himself kilt my first husband shortly after a stagecoach robbery went haywire. Damn posse was on me like mud on a swine in the days that followed, and I decided to get out while the gettin’ was good. I lit out for Okie. Not long after, Cole and Jesse introduced me to Sam, my second husband.” Belle’s eyes glimmered and she seemed riveted in a pivotal moment. “That was the one that took,” she whispered.
I kept quiet and gave her sufficient time to collect herself.
“Some gunslinger sent my Sam to his Maker a few years back. That’s how I ended up with that lazy good-for-nothin’ consolation prize, probably still sitting on his backside in that mud-n-straw shanty he alone declares a house.”
Her emotions ran the gamut from melancholic to homicidal. And at a greater clip than I had yet to experience. “Are you saying your current husband is an Indian?”
“As I live and breathe, storyteller.”
“Name’s Thomas Wilde, ma’am,” I said.
“I’ve heard the name…don’t expect me to strike up the band, Mr. Wilde. To answer your question, the Cherokee Nation claims my husband. He and Sam were brothers.”
Cole dug a baroque flask from a pocket. He took a swig before passing it to her, then shared a look with Jesse.
Jesse raked a hand through his hair and shifted his weight. “Remember the time we robbed that train out of Lexington?” I assumed he and Younger thought a subject change a grand idea.
Cole chuckled, a faraway look in his eyes. “We left with a king’s ransom.”
“Would’ve,” Jesse corrected, “if it weren’t for Belle. I recollect her givin’ back near half of what we took when the ladies we robbed went to tears over this heirloom or another.”
“That’s right,” Cole said over a finger snap, “I’ll be damned if she didn’t.” His eyes met Belle’s and ignited a spark.
Transfixed by their blatant bygone lust, my pen slipped from my fingers, a drop of ink plopping on my coat and immortalizing the occasion. I again considered the rumor surrounding Belle’s firstborn. “How many trains you figure you robbed, Mr. Younger?”
Cole shrugged and looked to Jesse. Jesse tipped the flask back, grimacing when he found it empty. “Not nearly enough. Look around, storyteller. This ain’t exactly a gentleman’s paradise.”
“What about the banks? If the story holds, some say you robbed twelve.”
Cole shook his head. “You heard wrong: twenty-one banks. Seven trains. And five stagecoaches.”
I noticed Jesse cock an eyebrow.
“Don’t forget that cash box at the Kansas City Exposition,” Belle said past a grin. “That loot kept us afloat for months.”
“Shame they had but the one,” Cole teased. “You sure had them fellers distracted. We could have absconded with a Queen of the West Washing Machine had we a mind to.”
All three shared a laugh, and I listened closely, jotting down both relevant information surrounding the heist and related anecdotes my audience might find equally entertaining.
“Is it true you lost one of your men during the Missouri Pacific Railroad robbery?” I asked when the conversation lagged.
Jesse shook his head. “You’d be referrin’ to the robbery over at Gads Hill. Emmet Stone was his name. Chockful of piss and vinegar, and not one ounce of sense. The mudsill had every intent to dive off his horse and into an open boxcar. It’s fair to say he fell considerably short of his destination. Popular opinion suggests he was still lying flat on his back when the law caught up. Pinkerton’s men had a great deal of difficulty identifying him too, what with his face resembling an old hedge apple left to rot.”
I shook off a shiver and commanded my stomach contents to stay the course. “When did the Pinkerton Agency become interested in the Younger Gang?”
“I expect old man Pinkerton began losing sleep on February 14, 1866,” Cole said with a laugh directed at Jesse.
“February 13,” Jesse corrected.
“The Clay County Savings Association robbery?” I queried, though I knew it for a fact, just as I knew Cole had exaggerated an earlier statement; the gang had robbed twelve banks, not twenty-one and five trains, not seven.”
“But you got to understand,” Cole said, bent at the waist, his nose nearly touching mine. “That hate goes a whole lot deeper than empty bank vaults, wallets, or pocketbooks. It weren’t just about the robberies or all them rich folk gettin’ their snouts twisted in a knot. This was about our allegiance to Quantrill and the confederacy. That Kansas City reporter making the Younger Gang out to be heroes is what truly rankled old man Pinkerton. We knew he’d pursue us until the end of his days if it came down to that. Until each and every one of us was either swingin’ at the end of a rope or riddled with enough lead to outfit the Seventh Regiment.”
“Why did Frank leave the gang?” I asked Jesse. There remained rabid curiosity surrounding the older James brother and I intended to milk that teat for all it was worth. But Jesse wasn’t in a cooperative mood. Rather than respond, he slapped his thigh with his hat, swung a leg over his gelded appaloosa, and cantered toward the reservation.
Likewise, Cole had also soured—face drawn—eyes glazed over, held hostage by a horrific memory. “I best catch up to Jesse,” he mumbled, tipping his hat to Belle before turning predatory eyes on me. “Do us right, Wilde, or you’ll answer for it.”
Belle watched Cole’s horse disappear into the lingering sunset. Then she snared my wrist. “Why did you ask the question when you already know the answer?” Before I could formulate an adequate response, she said, “I read that hogwash you wrote shortly after the Northfield raid. Weren’t Frank nor Jesse to blame for that child’s death.”
“Not directly, I suppose.”
Her anger warmed the space between us. A few moments later, she sighed long, then sprang upright and looked out over the prairie. Land as far as the eye could see. Endless swaths of freedom nothing more than a mirage to those stymied by the reservation. “The Lord once said, ‘The truth will set you free’. That may very well be one instance where Jesse and Cole disagree with the Good Book.” She searched the heavens as if she’d find redemption there. “Had any one of those men known that little boy would catch a bullet intended for one of them, they would have ridden by that bank without giving all that money a second thought.”
Her crude grammatical phrasing had reverted to that of one more refined and took me by surprise. I now suspected the stories regarding a proper upbringing more fact than fiction. Belle Starr was a chameleon determined to survive in a world turned brutal.
“I’m not making excuses for any of them, mind you, but that damn war turned many a God-fearing young man into a devil’s advocate. Pinkerton and his men tossing that firebomb into the James’s family home and killing his younger brother, well, that was the inciting event that carved Jesse a dead-end trail on the road to hell.”
“And what about you, Mrs. Starr?” I asked, treading as lightly as I knew how. “Does wondering what will become of your children ever give you pause?”
Her eyes pierced mine with a brutal intensity. “You’d be wise to leave my children out of this.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, fidgeting and further aggravating the raw spot developing on my hindquarters. “It’s just that you appear an educated woman with her wits clearly about her, a handsome woman by all accounts–”
She fixed a hard stare, and I considered the interview over. “This is where you’re wondering why I never set my sights higher? Why I settled for a two-bit outlaw, then another, and another after that? Why I surrounded myself with ne’er-do-wells, rather than highfaluting folk revered solely for their monetary worth?”
“It did come to mind.”
“Simply put, pretentious old-money whores bore the hell out of me.”
She volunteered more, and I wrote feverishly, completely immersed in her transparency, never fully realizing Belle’s candid offerings would soon catapult me to success.
“You once told one of my colleagues that your second husband was the love of your life. Is there anything else about Sam Starr you want the world to know?”
She chuckled and observed me through mocking eyes. “The world? You’re quite full of yourself, Thomas Wilde, don’t you think?” She graced me with a smile, and I immediately forgot the offense. “My Sam was a reluctant witness to the United States Army’s slaughter of those dearest to him…but I don’t suppose your readers care to hear about a horde of dead Indians. It hardened him, Mr. Wilde. I should think even a dullard would understand why his kindness seldom extended beyond the bed we shared. With the possible exception of the children, I alone knew a lamb’s heart beat beneath the savage one he presented to the world. To convince others is a fool’s errand, so I suggest we both conserve our energy and leave it to God’s discretion.” She rocketed upright, her attention suddenly riveted on coded plumes of smoke, valleys away. “Make yourself scarce, storyteller, and you can consider me a willing participant in your future installments. It would seem a posse has outfoxed the boys.”
#
My mind perpetually wandered to Belle and her beguiling escapades, making the days until I would meet her again pass as slowly as a coal train crossing the Continental Divide. I disembarked the Katy railcar with a skip in my step, bade the conductor good day, and made my way toward the livery stable, determined not to give the stable master an opportunity to hornswoggle me a second time.
I found Jacob Crowder cleaning out a stall while cursing a spirited stallion bent on kicking him to kingdom come. A thorough sweep of the stable convinced me the old nag he had thrust upon me a month ago had either gone to the boneyard or developed the good sense to make a break for it. We shared a few words not intended for the faint of heart, and Crowder returned with an Arabian whose disposition appeared questionable. He exchanged the reins for a shiny Liberty quarter and did so with a rather disconcerting grin. I heard him chuckle as I steered the horse toward the exit and my knees instinctively hugged the equine’s ribcage. The sun had no more hit that gelding’s nose than he took to the street with all the enthusiasm of a bovine in search of a matador. I was in desperate need of a drink, but the beast flew by the saloon before I could give it another thought. By the time we reached the edge of town, I had already cursed that horse six ways to Sunday and Monday was looking mighty bleak.
Dusk crawled over the reservation, blanketing teepees and lodges in contradictory shadows, making it impossible to identify the lanky man standing alongside Belle. Fisting the reins, I flicked the horse good about the withers and persuaded him from trot to gallop. The gelding slid to a stop about the time the outlaw, I felt certain was Billy the Kid, stirred up a dust devil and disappeared over a permanently scalped knoll.
Belle watched after him, then spun to face me. “I was expectin’ you yesterday. I thought maybe you’d changed your mind, Mr. Wilde.” She tossed perfectly symmetrical ringlets over a shoulder. “Punctuality is a virtue in the train-robbin’ business. Apparently, a feller in your line of work can’t say the same.” She waved away my mumbled apology. “A promise is a promise, so I’ll keep mine. But commence with your questions and make it quick.”
I decided to hold my inquiry regarding her visitor until I got myself back in her good graces. Immediately after asking the question surrounding her first husband’s abandonment, I realized she might never again find favor with me and that I best keep a close eye on both of her pearl-handled revolvers.
“If your intent is to humiliate me, Mr. Wilde, it would be wise to remember that the only time I ever blushed was when suffering a bout of scarlet fever. I regard myself as a woman who has seen much of life.”
My eye began to twitch as I took a seat under the walnut tree.
“For pity’s sake, you look as though someone hanged your best friend and then set your house afire! Yes, Jim ran off with the little strumpet, an occasion I considered a gift from God. Shortly thereafter, a bounty hunter caught up with him—on account of that stagecoach robbery I referenced when I first made your acquaintance—and filled him with lead.”
“They say you refused to identify the body.”
“How could I? By the time he and I parted ways, I hardly recognized the man,” she said, past a cunning smile.
I didn’t much care for her callousness and averted my eyes. “According to some, you wouldn’t assist the authorities because you didn’t want your husband’s killer to collect the reward money,” I said providing her the opportunity to redeem herself.
She shrugged and intimidated me with a frigid stare. “Never thought it right one man should expect coin for killin’ another. Besides, if I wanted Jim Reed dead, I woulda kilt him myself. I’ve never been lucky in love, except for the one time, Mr. Wilde, and I don’t appreciate the reminder. I suggest you take that under advisement.”
Decorum be damned! I suspected finding myself back in her good graces would require both considerable time and a saint’s temperament, neither of which I possessed, but I bided my time and posed a less incendiary question. “Why do you suppose Buffalo Bill never invited you to join his Wild West Show?”
She laughed and a barred owl in a nearby evergreen trilled a round of cacophonous hoo-WAAAHHs. “I expect he had the good sense to realize that three opinionated, pistol-carryin’ females was one too many.”
“I assume you’re referring to Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane?” I queried.
She nodded and plucked a long blade of grass and seesawed it under her nose. “Calamity claimed her roost long ago. Buffalo Bill grew a soft spot for her when that assassin, Jack McCall, shot Bill Hickok dead.” She chuckled and wagged her head. “Hickok never gave her the time of day, yet she thought the sun rose and set on the ole braggart. Damned if Jane didn’t follow him around like a lovesick puppy.” She covered a snort. “Heard tell the folks in Deadwood got Jane a plot picked out right next to him when her time comes.”
She correctly interpreted my pinched brow.
“Hickok already had him a wife,” she explained. “And even if he hadn’t, he preferred a woman in skirts, one who’d acquaint herself with a soakin’ tub and lye soap every blue moon. If one’s to put much stock in tattle, every time Hickok saw Jane comin’, he’d run for the hills. Him avoidin’ her was Deadwood’s greatest source of entertainment, so no surprise the townsfolk thought buryin’ Jane next to Hickok for all eternity was just about the funniest damn notion this side of the Mason-Dixon.”
Determined to learn the identity of the man I saw earlier, I thought it wise to casually steer the conversation toward other notorious outlaws. “Did you ever make Doc Holiday’s acquaintance?”
“I ran into him from time to time.” She cocked her head toward a shoulder while corkscrewing a ringlet with a jagged fingernail. “If memory serves, our last introduction took place in Dodge City. Him and Big Nose Kate had tied on a snoot full, and Doc was offerin’ Bat Masterson advice he clearly didn’t solicit.” She paused and studied an ambitious moon. “Some say the menfolk tolerated Doc due to his illness.” She shook her head. “I say they tolerated him because he weren’t afraid to give the devil himself his due. Best shot I ever laid eyes on.”
“Was Wyatt Earp in his company?”
She rubbed her chin, eyes wandering to the reservation. “Reckon I’ll have to chaw on that awhile. When Doc was in attendance, everybody else tended to fade into the background.” She stood and straightened her skirts. “I believe I’ve shared enough of my capers this go-round, Mr. Wilde. Those children won’t tend themselves. I speak from experience.”
Reluctantly, I muttered goodbye. Fascinated, I watched her hitch one foot into a stirrup, then dislodge it whilst spinning around and ultimately presenting herself sidesaddle. Remembering that scrawny outlaw, I shot upright and made a mad dash toward her horse. “When I rode up, was that William Bonney bending your ear?”
Her chin saluted the looming celestial canopy. “Best leave sleeping dogs lie and consider that feller you seen nothin’ more than a mirage.”
I watched her long hair slap a feathered boa as her horse galloped toward the reservation, her shadow sailing across the prairie and curiously a pace behind.
#
On regular intervals over the years that followed, I stayed wedded to my pocket watch long after the Katy railcar chugged away from the station and a hired horse spirited me toward the reservation. And without exception, I always found Belle waiting in our spot beneath the walnut tree that had endured the ravages of time with far greater enthusiasm than the rail-thin, sunbaked, middle-aged woman seated below.
And it was during those splendid hours of repose, she declared Next to a fine horse, I admire a fine pistol, as she told me tales of the Iowa Train Robbery near Adair, how she’d assisted the James Gang in loosening a section of track, how they’d commandeered a rope and derailed the locomotive as it rounded a blind curve. How she’d bound her breasts and disguised herself in kerchief and dungarees, afterwards gaining notoriety as the third man Pinkerton has yet to identify.
She spoke passionately, with much regard at times and none whatsoever at others, of all the wounded men she’d hid from the law and singlehandedly doctored back to health, proudly declaring her efforts had swindled both the authorities and the Pale Horseman out of their quarry.
Such events I chronicled in an increasingly popular column I script for the Kansas City Star. Belle’s contributions are largely responsible for the soaring subscription sales as well as a modest house I now call my own, shrinking in the ambitious shadows thrown off William Rockwell Nelson’s grand estate and that of August Meyer. Although our beliefs were often as diverse as deserts and wetlands, feast and famine, I have never known a more affable disputant. Dwelling on our shared laughter and rueful confidences, my eyes well with tears as I consider an epitaph worthy of the Bandit Queen an impossible task:
The Kansas City Star February 8, 1889
BELLE STARR, THE BANDIT QUEEN
Belle Starr, born Myra Maybelle Shirley, February 5, 1848, Carthage, Mo., US, succumbed to her injuries following a bullet wound to the back, February 3, 1889. At the time of this writing, her killer eludes justice.
A desperate woman by some accounts, Belle lived her life as she saw fit, showering those shunned by conventional societies with altruistic love, and abiding by only those laws she deemed appropriate. Enjoying a reputation as a crack shot, her marksmanship rivaled that of the glamorized Annie Oakley. Despite allegations to the contrary, Belle reserved her bullets for hunting food and competitive sport, never once turning her revolver, she referred to as “my baby,” on man, woman, or child.
Over the years, I have had the good fortune to spend a great deal of time in the company of the outlaw dubbed The Bandit Queen. I found her to be vivacious, fearless, forthright, and God-fearing. She was a devoted, impassioned companion, a strict but loving mother, and this journalist remains humbled by her friendship. It is with tremendous honor that I add my name to the long list of those mourning her passing.
THOMAS Z. WILDE
THE BIG THRILL MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
www.thebigthrill.org/2023/03/the-immortal-detective-by-d-b-woodling/
www.thebigthrill.org/2023/03/the-immortal-detective-by-d-b-woodling/
CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THIS HOLLYWOOD WHO-DUN-IT ON BOOKSHELVES!
Writing a novel is a long process, and I'm enjoying every minute of this one! Nearing the 70,000-word mark (for those who are counting).
