I.
Nashville, Tennessee - October 30, 1881
The train pulled into the stop at Union Station, and Deputy United States Marshall Abraham Woolsey stepped onto the platform. He had not returned to his home state for fifteen years, but a robbery in Alabama, the end of a meandering trail that began in Missouri and passed through a half-dozen states, had drawn him back. Nashville was two hundred and fifty miles west of his boyhood home and as far east as he cared to travel. He noted the date in his mind. All Hallows’ Eve is tomorrow. An inauspicious day on which to be born. He would turn thirty-three years old. Has it really been seventeen… no, eighteen. Eighteen years? Liza Ann would be thirty-five, had she lived, likely married with children the same age that he had been when he left home for good. Instead, men had paid them a visit in that fateful autumn of 1863, and he had lost both father and cousin in a single night. Woolsey mourned his father, just as he had grieved the loss of his mother at the age of ten, but it was Liza Ann who occupied his thoughts the most, for father and mother had seemed ancient to his youthful eyes. She had been barely two years older than himself, and her death seemed a twist of fate so capricious that Woolsey often turned his head at the sound of a woman’s laughter, half-expecting to see his cousin returned to life. Yet the heart knows what the eyes deny… His flight of fancy never lasted beyond the moment, for the void left by her death remained with him always.
Speaking of twists of fate… The bandits in Muscle Shoals had killed two men before absconding with the entire month’s payroll for a canal project, but one witness, a cattle drover who had survived two shots in the back, identified one of the thieves as a Nashville resident named Thomas Howard, a married man of about Woolsey’s age who speculated in livestock. “He wore a mask, but I knew well enough who he was – he’s missing part of a middle finger on his left hand.” Woolsey knew another man of similar description, a man who had lost part of a finger during the war, and he recited the particulars to himself. Lean face, hair parted on one side, intense blue eyes remarked on for their beauty. He had been tracking his quarry for five years, since a bank robbery and gunfight in Northfield, Minnesota had left six men dead.
He made a brief stop at the Federal Courthouse to confirm his arrival and make arrangements for a horse, then went to find a glass of whiskey. Have a drink and relax, he thought. The hunt would begin in earnest tomorrow.
II.
The house was seven miles south of the city proper, a three-room clapboard affair that overlooked gently rolling fields of wheat and corn. It was decent farmland, though he found it inferior to the Missouri River bottoms in which he had come of age. In truth, the cropland held little interest, for he was no farmer – he saw the open fields and wooded hillside with a guerilla’s eye for tactical advantage, for no pursuer could cross undetected. But a guerilla’s true advantage is mobility, he thought, and a lone fighter, tied to home and family, was vulnerable. That’s why I had to send them away. His wife had raised her voice in a rare act of resistance, but his decision was final, and he had seen her off to the station last week. By now, she would be back in Missouri with their children. A daughter and a son remained healthy; two others, twin boys, had died in infancy. She’s fearful of losing another child, he told himself, but the lie brought him no comfort.
And that was why he was going to Kentucky.
Cole Younger had reckoned her to be a hundred years old, and if his old partner in crime told even half the truth, she was more than an old hag who lived in the woods. The idea discomfited him a little. Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards. She lived on a farm north of Herndon, so old that she was rumored to be one of the first white settlers west of the Cumberland Plateau. The old woman had suffered a grisly fate during the war, and he could sympathize, for sometimes he had often gone hungry during the war years. But you were a boy then, young and strong.
Yes, I was a boy. I should have been working the farm or reading my schoolbooks. Instead, I was sent off to gun down Yankee soldiers. And now, bloodshed is all that I know.
A lone rider approached along the dirt road that edged the cornfield. The robbery in Alabama had been a mistake, for his allies were not hardened outlaws but farm boys and petty criminals who could not acknowledge the seriousness of their predicament. Two had already been captured and were doubtless spilling their guts as he dithered about the farmhouse, but those men did not worry him, for they knew neither his real name nor his place of residence. The third man knew both, for in a moment of drunken weakness, he had revealed his true identity.
And that’s why you have to die, he thought, grasping the revolver in his belt as he ventured forth to meet his visitor with a smile.
III.
October 31, 1881
The knock at his door came just after sunrise.
“Marshall?” The high nasal voice of the desk clerk sounded beyond the door. “You have a visitor in the lobby.”
“What sort of visitor?” he asked, reaching for the gunbelt at his bedside.
“A lawman. Says he has something that you’ll want to see.”
The carriage bounced on the dusty highway as they rode south. Woolsey was grateful for the ride, for it allowed him to keep an eye on their surroundings as the other man drove. He had sent word of his journey via telegraph from Joppa, Illinois, on the far side of the Ohio River, and a seasoned outlaw – who had survived both the war and a baker’s dozen years of banditry – would have connections in every community in which he sought refuge. They left the main road, and after another mile down a worn path, they pulled into the yard of a farmhouse.
“They take the body away yet?”
The deputy shook his head. “Sheriff thought you might want a look at him first.”
The corpse that sprawled on the sitting room floor appeared little older than the deputy at his side, and Woolsey studied the face closely, drawing upon a mental inventory of wanted posters from a dozen states. Not him, he thought, though the age was a dead giveaway – his quarry’s youthful countenance belied his true age, but there was no confusing the dead boy with a man of thirty-four. In truth, he had not expected otherwise. He leaves dead men in his wake, Woolsey thought. Not likely to die unless he runs across a seasoned gunfighter.
His right hand moved to the gunbelt as another carriage pulled up the drive.
IV.
“And how do you know Mr. Howard?”
“Why, he attended Sunday services with my congregation.”
“Faithfully?” Woolsey raised an eyebrow.
“Reasonably so.” The minister paused to adjust his glasses. Mister Howard’s occupation frequently required him to be away, but he was an enthusiastic participant, and if he crossed the threshold of the church, you could bet that he’d be praying at the altar by the end of the service.”
“Some men have a lot to pray about,” Woolsey said. “What kind of occupation was Mister Howard engaged in?”
“The buying and selling of cattle. May I ask what this is about?”
“In a minute. He have any family other than his wife and children?”
“Not to my knowledge.” The minister paused, thinking. “Though I did meet his business partner once, a Mister… Woodson? They bear a surprising likeness to one another, and I wondered if they might be related. Is Mister Howard in some sort of trouble?”
“You could say that.” Woolsey gestured to the deputy. “Show him the sitting room.”
Abraham Woolsey sat in the front yard, smoking and staring at the hard blue sky. The dead man in the house had been shot four times, three bullets to the chest and a final coup de grace in the center of the forehead, and if the Tennessee authorities caught up with him, Thomas Howard was sure to swing from the end of a rope. Woolsey thought it unlikely, for the outlaw had a day’s head start, and he was likely halfway to Missouri by now. If only –
“Marshall?” He turned to face the minister. “May I have a word with you?”
V.
Dover, Tennessee
He slept in the woods, not daring to approach the house, and when his brother rode out, he waited atop a wooded knob that overlooked the Cumberland River. It was a prearranged meeting place, to be used only in an emergency. Frank acknowledged his presence with a curt nod.
“Look at you, dressed in Sunday finery. I reckon the life of a farmer suits you.”
“You should try it on for size. Maybe it would suit you too.”
“That work we done in Muscle Shoals – I reckon they’re on our trail again.”
“You going home?”
“In a little bit. I got one more piece of business to tend to.”
He turned, and when the horse disappeared around the bend, Frank sat atop his own mount, pondering. He still had to feed the pigs, and he had promised Annie that he would make a trip into town for a bag of meal. It was a mundane existence, but he liked the domestic life of a farmer, and he had promised himself to live in peace after the disaster at Northfield. And then we ran short of money, and that depot in Alabama sat all fat and happy, just waiting to be looted. He rode to the hog lot, not quite ready to tell Annie that they were moving again.
God, I am so tired of this life.
VI.
Nashville
“So you knew who he was?”
“Not exactly,” the minister said, “I read the papers, and I knew that he bore a strong resemblance to the artist’s rendering. You have to remember, Marshall, that people want to put the privations of war and reconstruction behind them.”
“Not all of them,” Woolsey said. “What is it that you wanted to tell me?”
“He came to see me a week ago,” the minister said. “I read to him from the Book of James, and while he went into no particulars, he had a great deal on his heart that he wanted to unburden himself of. He said that he had served with Quantrill during the great massacre in Kansas and with Bloody Bill Anderson at Centralia. He wept openly as he talked of these things.”
Woolsey nodded. “What else did you discuss? Any happenings in Missouri after the war? Maybe Iowa or Minnesota?”
“As I said, he went into no particulars, but… I hesitate to speak the truth – it’s the devil’s work.”
“Go on,” Woolsey said.
“A day’s ride to the north, in Kentucky, you can find the remains of a burned-over farm. I don’t hold with mediums or table-knockers, Marshall, and any man who seeks guidance should find it within the Good Book. Apparently, he thought otherwise, for he sought a portent regarding his future. Someone, perhaps the foolish young man who lies dead in the sitting room, let slip the story.”
“All right.” Woolsey did a quick mental calculation. He could be in Kentucky by sunset. “Who did he go to see?”
“Not who, Marshall, but what.” The minister shook his head sadly. “He went to see the Johnson Witch.”
VII.
Herndon, Kentucky
The moon shone brightly in the night sky as he reached the crossroads. Woolsey had stopped twice to ask for directions, and once, he had ventured down the wrong road, an unfortunate detour that added an hour to his journey. He forded a stream and continued north until he reached another intersection, the junction of three roads that split the adjoining field into a crude wedge. He rode for another quarter mile and hitched his mount to a fencepost, for in Woolsey’s experience, men accustomed to life in the saddle could not fathom that a horseman would dismount and approach on foot, and he had captured more than one criminal through the simple act of walking.
He paused at the edge of the road and studied the ground. In contrast to the cropland that he had passed during the daylight hours, this plot lay untouched by a farmer’s plow, and only weeds grew there. The moonlight illuminated the ground imperfectly – there could be a dozen places where an outlaw might lie in ambush – but the land was gently sloping, and a copse of spindly trees grew in the center of the field. Woolsey peered into the empty space as he recalled the minister’s words. “Folks in Kentucky claim the Johnson Witch is an old woman who died in the winter of 1863. She haunts the woods around her old homestead, and every so often, a cow or a horse goes missing there. Children too – if you believe the tales people tell. It is rumored that on certain nights, when the moon is full or on All Hallows’ Eve, she tells the future to the first man who crosses her threshold.”
And as luck would have it, tonight we have both, Woolsey thought. A full moon on All Hallows’ Eve. In the distance, he heard voices and a desperate weeping – the sound of a man crying in the darkness. Conscience bothering you? He drew his revolver and began a slow advance, cursing the loud rasp of brambles raking at his coat. The man who called himself Thomas Howard faced charges in a half dozen states, and though he wished to deliver a living prisoner to the Federal magistrate, Woolsey knew that gunplay was inevitable if his approach was detected. A hundred paces into the field, the weeping ceased, and he froze, listening for the sound of the fugitive.
“Put that pistol away.” Woolsey heard the double click as the hammer was pulled back on a revolver, and he slowly holstered his own weapon. “Now, turn around slowly.”
The outlaw stood on a low rise, his silhouette backlit by moonlight. Woolsey took a deep breath. Make your play and see where it leads.
“Jesse James, I’m placing you under arrest.”
“Arrest?” There was a low whistle from the shadow on the knoll. “You got a good sense of humor for a lawman. I could have killed you outright if I wanted.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“No need.” Jesse James drew near, close enough for Woolsey to see the lean face and wide-set eyes. “You see, twenty years on the run sets a man to thinking about his end, and it’s been on my mind for some time, but she told me that I’d never see the business end of a hangman’s rope or the inside of a jail cell, and that no lawman would ever lay a finger on me. So I’m feeling generous if you’d like to turn around and –”
Woolsey drew, and though he was faster than most men, his enemy was an accomplished gunslinger, and he figured that his own odds were no better than even. Jesse James fired from a crouch as his own weapon discharged, and both shots sailed wide of their targets as Woolsey’s arms flailed and the ground gave way beneath his feet.
VIII.
He was in a cavern of sorts, and the cool, mildewy air of the enclosed space raised gooseflesh on his arms. Woolsey took a brief inventory of his limbs and was puzzled to find nothing broken, for he had evidently fallen for some distance. A sinkhole, he thought. He knew that such voids opened in the earth at times, swallowing entire herds of cattle or the cabin of an unlucky settler, and he considered himself fortunate to be alive at all. Don’t count yourself as lucky until you find a way out, he thought.
“Abe?” There was a familiar voice in the darkness and a tinkling laugh, one that he had not heard for nearly two decades. He took a cautious step forward, but his voice responded of its own will, defying his higher faculties.
“Liza Ann?”
A glowing light bathed him in an unearthly green, refracting in a dazzling pattern through the crystalline structure of the cavern walls. It can’t be, Woolsey thought, yet she was there, clad in the cotton dress that she had worn during the summer, lustrous red hair flowing about her shoulders, her green eyes sparkling like gemstones. You died like the others, he thought, yet he took another halting step. You died like the others, but you’re here now. We’re a family again, just as we were before.
“I’ve waited for you so long, dear brother,” she said as her bare arms reached for him.
A pair of shots rang out, unbearably loud within the narrow walls of the cavern, and Woolsey slipped the pistol into his holster as Liza Ann’s carefree laugh dissolved into a hacking tubercular cough.
“She wasn’t my sister. And she is dead.”
“Very good, Marshall, though you thought of her as such during her lifetime.” The shape at the end of the hall was amorphous, a human form but vaguely arachnoid in its countenance. “Still, you sensed the truth easily enough, for the heart knows what the eyes deny.”
“You must be the Johnson Witch,” Woolsey said. “The woman the bandit came to see.”
“Who I am,” the witch said, “is a matter of debate for theologians and occultists, but in regard to your friend above, you are correct. The young outlaw is quite concerned for his future, and sometimes I tell what I see.”
“And did you tell him the truth? If I’m to believe him, he’ll never see the inside of a courtroom or the wrong end of a lawman’s gun.”
“It is true,” she said. “A left-handed version of the truth at any rate, for I do not lie, but I do not reveal all that I know. But enough of him – let us discuss more pressing matters.”
There was movement in the darkness, and a series of haunting images filled his imagination – soldiers, a crying child, the intricate pattern of a spider’s web – as it closed the distance between them.
“The soldiers came to the woman’s farmhouse at the onset of a long winter, and they took grain for their horses and slaughtered her pigs for their own bellies. They were not wholly unkind, for they left her a little food – not much, but enough to ensure her survival until spring. They departed, headed south to their deaths in Tennessee… and the outlaws followed hard on their trail.”
The Johnson Witch shimmered in the eldritch glow of the cave as a tentacle caressed his cheek. Woolsey stood perfectly still, spellbound by that swaying form. He understood that the thing in the cave was a graver threat than the gunman in the field, yet he was curiously unafraid. She continued, her voice the silky smoothness of an adder’s hiss.
“The outlaws took everything, all the food that remained for the winter. Do you know what it’s like to starve, to feel your body weaken as your mind breaks from desperation? The woman grew weaker and wasted away to nothing, until the only thing that remained was a trace memory of the hunger, that fearful gnawing emptiness that persists even after the veil between this world and the next is rent in two. The outlaws rode away, and the fortunate ones died in the war. The others, I called home one by one. They are here with me now… and we are hungry.”
A cold hand took hold of his ankle.
Abraham Woolsey stumbled backward, and though his mind began to clear as the bonds of enchantment were loosened, the dead grasped at his limbs as they emerged from the depths of the cave. He smashed the skull of one against the crystalline wall, but another moved forward to take its place. It gaped at him, baring a set of blackened teeth that protruded from the lipless mouth.
“A feast tonight,” the Johnson Witch hissed. “A man with bloody hands makes a sumptuous meal, and two such men cross my threshold tonight.”
As dead hands reached for his throat, Woolsey heard the distant echo of gunshots. His hands felt none of their usual certainty as he fumbled for his revolver, but his fingers closed around the grip, and a callused thumb drew back the hammer as the muzzle cleared its holster. He fired, and a strange effect revealed itself as the bullet struck its target, for the cave walls appeared to flicker, and for an instant, he was surrounded by the empty field through which he had entered. The injured ghoul crumbled to dust, and he fired twice more, returning another pair of monsters to the earth from which they came. He fired at the shimmering glow, and Woolsey could not tell whether the bullet had missed its mark or simply passed through the empty air – perhaps it lacked form or substance and could not be killed with earthly weapons. Out of ammunition, he snatched up the weapon by its heavy barrel and used the butt end as a club, smashing the skull of another creature before the revolver was slapped from his hand. Bony fingers now grasped his arms, and he struggled futilely against the doom that now came upon him.
The Johnson Witch grew and became solid, its body given shape by the cravings that urged it onward. Of the little that he remembered afterward, Abraham Woolsey could only recall in a flash of images and sensory impressions – fur and scales, a protruding insectoid proboscis, a revolting amalgam of a hundred creatures. The eyes, black and empty, were devoid of intelligence, yet the shape retained an indefinable vestige of humanity, a kinship that frightened Woolsey even more than the clawed fingers and gaping maw. The air grew rancid as it drew him into its embrace…
… and four gunshots rang out in the darkness. Woolsey nearly vomited as a spray of green ichor erupted from the wounded head, and then it faded away, its only residue an awful hissing cry – the sound, Woolsey thought, of unsatisfied hunger.
IX.
He lay on the cold ground, breathing deeply, and when he heard the sound of hoofbeats, Woolsey lifted his head with effort.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you now.”
“If you were going to kill me, I reckon you would have done it already,” Woolsey said. “You shot all your ammo, didn’t you?”
Jesse James spat into the dirt as he pointed toward the thicket. “Damndest thing I ever saw – them trees can’t be more than thirty paces in any direction, but I stumbled around in there for hours. Still, I got more than enough ammo if you want to make your play.”
“Can’t – I dropped my gun somewhere.”
“All right then,” The horse stamped, eager to be underway. “I told you before that I’m feeling generous, so I reckon I’ll let you live. It don’t really matter, since you’ll never catch me.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“Yeah.” For the first time, the outlaw’s haughtiness appeared to waver. “That’s what she told me – and I believe her.”
“The heart knows what the eyes deny,” Woolsey said. “I think you’d rest easier if you turned yourself in.”
“I’ve been doing this since I was fourteen years old. Long enough that I don’t know nothing else.”
He turned his horse, and Woolsey hailed him with a low whistle.
“Jesse? One last question.”
Jesse James sat in the saddle, looking down upon him from a great distance. “What?”
“Why did you save my life?”
“I didn’t.” Jesse James spurred the horse as his final words echoed across the field. “I was aiming for you when I shot.”
Afterword
St. Joseph, Missouri
January 1, 1882
Frank joined him in December, and it felt good to be reunited with his brother. His wife complained that he thrashed and moaned in his sleep, but in truth, he was happier than he had been in years. Sure, the old days were over, and even in Missouri he was no longer seen as the torch-bearer of postwar Confederate resistance. A common outlaw, they called him now, and there were rumors that the Governor himself was hot on his trail, but none of that mattered any more. No lawman, no hangman, no prison, he thought. And he had big plans.
He had scouted the bank in Platte City and the train that ran through the Blue Cut west of Glendale, and though Frank was reluctant to go back to the old life, he was confident that with time and persuasion, his brother would come around. They needed a few more men, but his cousin put him in touch with a couple of reliable hands, a pair of brothers from Richmond. One of them was coming to meet him today.
He stepped from the stagecoach, a fresh-faced kid of about twenty. Good-looking young man, he thought. Hope the ladies don’t keep him too busy for a bit of honest work. Jesse James smiled, for he liked the youngster right away – they were going to have a bright future together.
“I’m Jesse.” He extended a hand, and the new recruit shook it with a firm grip.
“Bob Ford.”
Author’s notes:
1. This tale is a blend of fact and fiction, and I have taken some real events from the life of Jesse James (for example, he did live in Nashville for several years) and altered others to fit my story. If you know a little of the outlaw’s history, you will understand the significance of the meeting at the end.
2. The Johnson Witch is a bit of fauxlore invented by my sister-in-law to scare her nieces during a Halloween hayride. I’ve added details, but the bones of the story were her invention. When this story becomes a made-for-TV movie and makes me rich, I owe her a huge royalty check.
3. The theft of food by soldiers and outlaws is a true detail, though the story that I know happened in Tennessee rather than Kentucky.
So freaking good! More Abraham Woolsey. MORE, I say!
Saw a tag about this but then lost it in the notifications while I was away for Easter. Remembered to come and check! Great story! Love how you used the prompt!