The Ellsworth Tragedy
by Mike Wilkerson

PART 1

Ellsworth, Kansas, October 1868

I was with ol' John Brown at Harper's Ferry. Ain't got much bearing on what I'm fixing to tell ya and my name ain't in no history book, but I was there just the same. Lost the use of three fingers on my left hand in that damn skirmish. Fell when my mare jumped a creek. Got my digits caught in the flank cinch and tore out the joints on 'em. I kept 'em, though. Got a device which keeps 'em outta my way so they don't matter much. Still got good use of my thumb and the finger next to it and they're stronger than the average man's entire hand. Overcompensation, the doc calls it. 'Sides, right hand's fine and it's the one I use most of the time. I get along all right.
     I got myself quit of John Brown and fellers like him after that. He was loco in the end, sending out his own son with a white flag instead of doing it his own self. I was only there in the first place because of a little ol' gal pushing me to do the Lord's work. 'Tweren't nothing but a sprout back then and filled up with feelings below the belt just like any other feller my age. Hell, I wasn't there for no cause like all them other boys. I had no cause but myself. And that gal . . . I ain't seen her now for ten years I guess.
     There weren't nothing good come of it, but I learned a lot from that whole situation at Harper's Ferry. Learned that a feller sees enough blood he can get used to it. Maybe too used to it. I knew the second I saw those drunken town folk pull ol' Willy Leeman out the Potomac river while he was trying to escape, shoot him full of holes and then drag his red-soaked body through town that I weren't gonna see nothing worse than that.
     But this ain't about John Brown or poor Willy Leeman. They hold no truck with me and my days of rambling are plumb gone. I only told you about all that to let you know a little bit about myself as you're reading this here. I've seen a few things, I have. I've done a few rights and I've done plenty wrong — heap wrong — and it never hurt my sleep. But what I've got to say here is the worst of it and something I've been carrying around for a time now and I don't sleep so well no more.
     I know I'll keep on carrying this burden right till the end. 'Cept maybe now, from saying what I got to say, the load will get a bit lighter as I get ready to move on. I don't know, but maybe.

     Bill Hickok ran for sheriff earlier this year. He lost to E.W. Kingsbury and it was probably for the best. Bill ended up a U.S. Marshal with that redleg shadow of his, Jack Harvey, in tow. Ol' Bill's a heller, by God. "The Slade of Western Kansas" they call him and that's just about right. And Kingsbury does okay considering the reputation of this here burg. Hell, he does just fine. But she's a vigilante town through and through and he knows it. There's a man served up for breakfast ever'day and even the best of the toughest ol' boys don't last long.
     Still, even with all the killing and the reminder of a cholera epidemic the previous year and all the folks that died because of it, Ellsworth was growing. It weren't nothing to see some hucksters set up shop wherever they felt the need to back then, though I hear that's changing ever so fast. It's why I paid no mind when I saw a sweaty fat man with a bald head and hairy neck by the name of Boss Purdy show up with a woman and a few cases of rotgut hooch and go to work just outside of town in a deserted sandstone dugout. They blended in with the dozens of such rigs already there. He was just another chiseling pimp and from a distance she weren't nothing more'n another whore.
     I was a shotgun messenger for the Butterfield Overland Dispatch back then. Had been nigh on five years. It kept a feller busy what with the stock of men wandering around the territory. Not to mention the damn Cheyenne. Let me tell ya son, I've seen some hard and bloody days in this here territory and I've spilt my share on the good side of the law, bum hand and all.
     I'd just come off a hard run to Trego County and back that first time I spotted her. It was early in the day and the stage ran so close to where the whore stood so's I couldn't help but get a good look at her as she stood outside of her dugout while furiously shaking the dust and lice out of a thin wool blanket. I could've reached out and touched her. I wanted to. My bad hand even twitched at the thought.
     She was purty in a pale, hardscrabble sort of way. Her body was thin, but full in places it was supposed to be full in. Had hair the color of a sun-stricken crow's back and it was thick and curly and worn kind of wild, like she just woke up and didn't bother to brush it and didn't care. Deep lines like creek beds crawled from points near her temples and converged 'til they spilled into eyes the color of a deep blue pool of water. Those age lines made her look good, even if she was still a young thing. But it was the way those blue eyes were set against her black hair that pulled me in.
     We passed through those shabby and desolate outskirts, leaving her behind as we made our way into town. I jumped from the stage while she was still rolling, the leather money bag in my bad hand and my sawed-off Parker in my good hand. I was headed for the bank when a voice reached for my attention.
     "I see we are blessed with yet another soiled dove and her rather rotund and certainly unscrupulous benefactor . . . quite a sophisticated setting we are establishing."
     I turned to see Harold Gray standing out front of the hotel and not doing too much of anything particular. Looking like he'd had a rough night of drinking or whoring or both. Gray's a pretty good ol' boy far as I know him, even if he is from the East and dresses a bit too dapper for folk's taste. I looked as he pointed in the same direction I'd just come from.
     "Rather fair, wouldn't you say, Charlie John?"
     I nodded. "Something 'bout her. Hair's so black and her eyes are so blue. Ain't never . . . " I stopped there, partly in embarrassment and partly thinking for the right word to describe her.
     Gray smiled and his finely-trimmed moustache spread across his face.
     "Mmmm, you have an eye for details but not the words, my friend. It's our Hester's contrasts you are seeing, but are failing to communicate," he said. "I'd venture to say Portuguese blood flows through our damsel's veins," he added.
     I said her name to myself: "Hester." And then I turned to Gray. "Contrasts . . . what's all that mean, anyhow?"
     He looked up at the sky kinda forlorn like and then closed his eyes. "The way her iridescent indigo eyes are set against her raven hair, making both colors as deep and startling as the innocent remembrances of better days long past. Days we can never return to." He paused and looked back to me with a sly grin and added in case I was wondering: "I visited the lass upon her arrival and, I confess, several times since. Very accomplished and efficient young lady. Reminds me of a girl from my own youth. Her name often recounts . . . "
     And then he got teary, which was common for him when he hit the whiskey and got in his cups, which was often. I ain't much for a grown man weeping so I kept moving, his words knocking around in my head while I dropped the money and my shotgun off at the bank. Then I walked up to Joe Berry's place, letting the whore's contrasts simmer while I had a few whiskeys. I then went up the street to the Chinaman's for a bath and shave, my first of either in a month. The Chinaman's wife burned my clothes. Their boy fetched a spare set from my hotel room.
     I asked around about her real casual like as I was getting myself fed. Boys confirmed her name was Hester and that she was right fine if maybe a little put upon in her years from living a whore's life. Still, she wasn't long in the tooth by anyone's reckoning. She had a long, childlike drawl to her voice when she spoke and fellers that heard her talk and knew their business put her from somewhere down south, maybe Georgia or Louisiana. And she told those who'd care to ask that she didn't know her last name or her age, but that Boss Purdy said she was just plain ol' Hester and she was likely in her late teens. That was the best he could estimate. I didn't care 'bout any of that. Nobody did. Didn't even know my own age, but suspect I wasn't too far ahead of her. I weren't young anymore. Neither of us were young anymore.
     I didn't go to her right off. I only watched as those dirty saddle bums and bullwhackers and soldiers lined up outside of that one-room dugout by the dozen for her. Boss would get 'em wound up with that swill he sold and they'd be raring to go by the time they got their chance. She'd get 'em in and out in only a few minutes time and word was she could put her hips just the right way so it never took much at all to get those boys where they needed to be. Ol' Boss had himself a goldmine in that girl and he treated her fair, all things considered, because he was a business man at heart and Hester was A-1 product.
     Over the following weeks word got around about Hester. She didn't talk much or smile at all, but fellers always left feeling better 'bout themselves and not just because of the obvious. Not too many womenfolk make a feller feel that way.
     I had no businesses even going in Boss's place, as I had money for good whiskey to be drunk in a place with straight walls and a floor made of wood. Still, I became curious enough after a couple of weeks to try her out for myself. And once I saw Hester up close again I didn't even care about the whiskey or anything else. I was trapped and there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do about it. Not a thing I wanted to do about it.
     We got on just fine, right from the start, even if she never said more'n twenty words to me during that entire spell. Still, every time I saw her I'd pay a little more silver. I weren't angling for nothin'. I just felt like I wanted to do something nice for her. I suspect nobody ever had before.
     At first she didn't say anything about the extra. But around the third or fourth time she spoke up in that honeyed southern voice of hers. Her manner of speech reminded me she was still a young woman.
     "Why you be doing this?" she asked.
     Her voice startled me. She'd never said so many words to me in one stretch.
     "I suppose I don't know why," I managed. "I just like to. I can't spend it all on myself — ain't got the time. And I got ever'thing I need already. I don't need much to get by."
     She hugged herself as she spoke. "Boss don't be liking fellers gettin' sweet on me now, ya hear? Gets his neck hairs up and he starts poutin'."
     I winked at her. "Don't tell him then. He ain't never around, anyhow. Keep it for yourself and buy yourself something purty. That's what I meant it for." I added, "Besides, I ain't getting sweet. I just . . . "
     She turned away from me. "You don't have to be 'splaining yourself to this ol' gal."
     I took a step toward her. "You ain't so old, Hester." I'd never used her name before while in her company and it felt strange and good to do so.
     The dugout was damp and chilly. She looked to the pallet where her business was done and where we'd just come from. I looked that way too, feeling a sudden shame. Her voice dropped to a notch just above a whisper.
     "I be a'feeling like I am. I be a'feeling like an ol' sway back horse some days. Just old and creaky and something nobody wants nothing to do with. Fellers get what they want and get back to moving on and I'm left here all by myself a'waitin' for the next hungry buck to come in. Been that way since I can remember. 'Spect it always will be."
     She never moved her eyes from the worn-out mattress where God knows how many fellers had laid with her. I grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her. Her face, buried in her black nest of hair, looked small.
     "I'm saying your not used up and ain't nothing about you is creaky. And those boys keep coming back because they fancy ya. I'm saying —"
     She didn't let me finish. She brought her face up and kissed me flat and hard on the lips with such force it knocked me backwards. She didn't pull away in embarrassment. She just held them to mine until I slipped both my arms around the thick part of her back and pulled her ever so tightly to me while saying words that I never said before and I will not privy you to.
     They belong to me and Hester.

     Running with her was wrong. A rough feller like me always on the rove had no right to expect a woman to wait for him. Hester said I wasn't so hard underneath it all. Said she knew the first time I laid money in her hand and her fingers brushed my wrists that I were different. I thought maybe she felt sorry about my slighted left hand, even though I never felt sorry about it myself. I never paid Hester no mind when she talked like that. Womenfolk often talk about things men ought not bother in.
     Still, she let me have it for nothing, even though I never thought of the act of laying with her in that way. I liked her company. And what time we did spend together sometimes left me asking questions 'bout things I ain't never considered before. Things that can make a man lose his direction. It was that damn talk of hers making me feel that way, I suppose.
     "I like your eyes," she said once.
     I was thoroughly mortified. Here she was talking about mine the same way I thought about hers, but never had the guts to say out loud.
     "Why? I don't even know what color they are. Hell . . . "
     She traced her finger along the bottom edge of my right eye. "They be a'changin' all the time. Brown. Gold. Green. Folks be a'calling that hazel, only I don't know what it means. Just know I'm a'liking 'em."
     "You don't mind me being a cripple?" I said with a grin. I unstrapped the leather thong which kept my bad fingers out of the way and held up my bum left hand with those three fingers laying limp like emptied out cow teats.
     Hester grabbed the fingers ever so gently in the palm of her tiny hand without taking her eyes off mine. "Didn't even pay no 'tention to 'em till just now. Don't change the way your eyes look, Charlie John. Don't change how good you been a'treating me or how I be feeling 'bout ya."
     And they weren't forced words. They came off natural like, 'cause she meant what she said. I never really had a good response when she said such things. To this ol' boy it felt strange, chatter like that, but I'd walk a day without water in bare feet to hear her say 'em just the same.
     I suppose she had womanly ideas. Only she never mentioned them. Not once did Hester ask me to take her away or do right by her. Don't know what I would have said at the time if she did. It was enough just feeling good about being alive and being around her, even if I'd come to question why she would want someone like me.
     After a time, Boss Purdy hired a stinker to work for him and keep the rowdies in line. Called himself Galliban. Folks said he was half Mex, but his skin was pale and he didn't have an accent so I doubt that was true. He was a small man in that he came to my chest and I ain't much in the height department. His face was like a hatchet with pock scars on both cheeks and he was wiry through the body with greasy black hair on his head which hung to his narrow, bony shoulders. For defense he carried two .36 Navy Colts tucked in his belt crossdraw style, like plenty of other young fellers fancying themselves a shootist. Never saw him clear leather once, but Galliban had that 'possum look that made fellers stay back, 'cause that look said he'd just as soon drill you in the back as up front. He didn't mean a thing to me and I paid him no mind. But he scared Hester.
     "He's always givin' me these here sly looks. Like an ol' starved coyote creeping up on a fat goose. And he's got a stink about him I pert' near can't stand. I've smelt all kinds of things and all kinds of fellers, but he's got something different that's just plain rotten. Boss says not to worry 'bout him, but I don't like him. Boss is skeert of him anyhow."
     Hester looked away from me when she said it. Not in some frightened way, but like she wanted an answer on what she should do, or maybe hoping I would say she didn't have to make a living like that no more. I didn't know what to say. Instead, after a time, I gave her something I hoped would take the fear away and ease her worries.
     A summer's day and we were laying underneath a giant cottonwood tree, shedding itself of big white flakes like it were a snowstorm while listening to the Smoky river as it ran hard from the recent rains. We weren't saying much, just letting cotton cover us like a couple of kids who don't know no better and are better off because of it. After a spell, Hester stood and shook cotton off her dress while saying Boss would be looking for her and she needed to skedaddle. I jumped to my feet.
     "I got you a little present," I said, quick like.
     Her eyes lowered just a bit. "You got me somethin'? Nobody ever done that 'fore."
     And she held her eyes to the ground like she was embarrassed, 'cause ain't nobody ever give her anything in her life and she don't know how to act because of it. She didn't smile. Hester never really smiled much. But she got some rose on her cheeks and I felt like I done her wrong, 'cause a girl like her prob'ly was hoping for some store-bought candy or the like. Hester wasn't getting that sort of thing from me 'cause I didn't know no better until that very moment.
     "It ain't much," I said, trying to take the sting out of my misstep. I pulled out a small piece of oilcloth with a tiny bundle inside and handed it to her.
     "It's somethin'," she said in a shy voice.
     "I ain't never bought anything for a gal or anyone, so —"
     "What is it?" she asked, cutting me off.
     I touched a finger to her little freckled nose which she wrinkled up. "You gotta find that out fer yourself, darlin'."
     She peeled away the oilcloth and stared down at the miniature weapon which I'd polished to a high luster.
     I struggled for words. "It's a belly gun," I said, before she had a chance to say anything. "It's small so you can hide it on your person and be keeping yourself safe from all that riffraff."
     She looked at me and I swear the corners of her mouth came up like the dawn on a bright new day.
     "You looking out after this ol' gal, Charlie? You sweet on me?"
     Something broke inside me and I couldn't take nothing as purty as the look in her eyes no more. I looked away with a squint so she'd think it was only the sun in my face.
     "I suppose that's what I'm a'sayin'. Christ."
     Her voice wavered. "It's purty. It sure 'nuff is. I ain't never had nothing so shiny 'fore. Even the wood is shiny. By God . . . "
     And she started to cry. Ain't nothing purtier'n watchin a hard girl cry for the right reason. Those rivers running down outta those blue eyes and over her cheeks put me on my heels and then she wrapped those long arms around my neck and pulled me close, the tears on her cheek brushing against my lips. I reached out my tongue and tasted her salt, swallowing the very life of her and making her part of me. I didn't know what to say and she didn't say nothing either. She told me how she felt in the only way that ol' girl ever learnt how to and partner it was fine by me.

End Part 1, Part 2 coming next month.


Mike Wilkerson's work has appeared online and in print. He was raised in rural Northwest Kansas and now resides in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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