Dust of Lies

Chapter Six - Brazos Bottoms

    Morning came early. Viva was already stirring before I could get my eyes open. I quickly threw on a pair of jeans, tee shirt, and tennis shoes, and pulled my hair into a ponytail. There was no need to worry about appearances, after all, for the trip to the Brazos Bottoms.


Bessie obviously felt otherwise; when we picked her up, she was decked out as if going to a social. Her white capri pants were paired with a shiny turquoise blouse and white sandals. A large-brimmed hat with a scarf that tied around the chin and oversized sunglasses completed her ensemble. I was not sure if this was the attire of a southern belle or old Hollywood.


      Bessie planted herself in the backseat behind me and off we went. The Lang Plantation on the Brazos Bottoms lay on the old Marlin-Waco road, about seven or eight miles west and north of Marlin. This old road hadn’t been used much after State Highway Seven was built. Bessie insisted that this was the best way to get to the plantation, but I wasn’t so sure. The dusty dirt road became more and more narrow the farther we went and the ruts were so deep at times I wasn’t sure that my Jeep would make it.


      The dust turned to muck as we got closer to the river. I shifted the Jeep into four-wheel drive and kept going. Bessie was right: the flat fertile prairie farm ground slowly gave way to the thick timberland that formed a ribbon of green along the river. Tall trees spread to make a cool, shady canopy over the road that was by now little more than a trail. The dusky smell of damp soil was mixed with the sweet piney smell of the forest in this fertile retreat; this was, finally, the Brazos Bottoms.


    The road ran parallel with the river but the dense foliage masked the rolling waters. We must have traveled over five miles before I could see the sandy banks of the Brazos peek through the dark green canopy. Around the next corner, the road flattened into a broad clearing surrounded by weathered and rotting shacks, encircling in turn a large plantation home equally ravaged by time.


      I turned off the ignition and helped Viva and Bessie out of the car. Now I could understand Bessie’s choice of attire as I watched her make her way to the front of this rambling structure. She was paying homage to the grandeur of a way of life that had once existed in this Eden sequestered deep in the heart of the Brazos.


      I remained quiet, as did Viva, waiting for Bessie. Finally she turned to us.


      “Come on,” she said, and we followed. Bessie led us to the front veranda where she opened what was left of two large double-hinged doors.


    As they swung open, we could see the skeletal frame of the beams and timber with flaking lathe and plaster clinging to the weakened spindles of wood. Even thought the house was abandoned, I still had the eerie feeling that I was an intruder in someone’s home.


Bessie, however, seem to feel quite comfortable as she led us through. The stairway to the second story was impassable, but I could see portions of the rooms through holes in the ceiling. Bessie’s tour ended on the back porch where she sat down at the top of a large stone stairway leading down into what was once the backyard. Viva and I followed suit.


    “It is just as you had described it, Bessie,” Viva said, confirming my suspicion that the two women had already had conversations about this place.


      “Okay,” I said to them. “Just what is going on that I don’t know about?”


    “Kay, everything that I told you last night was the truth,” Viva said. “I just didn’t tell you everything. I felt that it would be best that Bessie and I share the information that we have worked on over the last two decades.”


    I stared at her. This was a new Viva, calm and in control.


    “Kay. Are you listening?”


    I nodded.


    “As I told you before, Ora and I were best friends. After Cowboy died, I wanted to prove Jesse Cole’s story. Her life had always been hard. She lost her real father at a young age and had to suffer through those awful years with Ben Townsend. Her first husband hanged himself at the age of nineteen, and her marriage to Cowboy was a trial. But the hardest part of all was the burden her children inherited from Jesse Cole. They grew up knowing their father was the son of a famous outlaw. They each suffered for it, but that’s another story.” She shifted her position slightly. “After Cowboy died, I was free to find the truth and give it to her boys in hopes it would help them understand why they grew up the way they did. I want them to understand who their father really was.”


    She sighed and exchanged glances with Bessie. “Ora didn’t live long enough to do this for her children. But I promised myself that I would do everything in my power to validate Cowboy’s story. That’s not an easy task for an old woman.”


    Viva’s passion was too great to merely be an interest in Ora’s boys.  I suspect Darrel and Joseph were deeply rooted in her need to unravel the past. I have learned that there is more to Viva than what meets the eye.


    “And that’s why you need me,” I said.


    “When Ora died, she left me all of her documents and papers to help me in my search. That’s what I carry in the box. I began by writing the courthouse in Falls County, asking for information about Emma Anders, and Bessie’s the one who responded. Over the years, we’ve both worked on this project, Bessie from his birth forward, and me from his death back.” She smiled at Bessie. “We never met in person, but when you offered to go to Texas, I wrote Bessie a letter. It was no accident that we ran into Bessie at Marlin.”


    I sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me? You know you can trust me,” I said, more than a little hurt.


    “Kay, I told you last night, but I will say it again. It was important to me that you knew enough to believe before I dumped the entire story on you. It’s easy for people to think that a person my age has dementia.” She grinned suddenly, vividly. “You have to admit, this isn’t a story you’d tell to convince people of your sanity!” Another pause. “My own son thinks I’m crazy and doesn’t approve of my obsession with the story. When you came along, and were all excited about the hanging of Ezra Hacker, I hoped I had an ally.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “I wouldn’t be here in Texas if it weren’t for you.”


    Viva was right. If she’d told me all of this before I saw the poem and had a mission of my own, I would no doubt have sided with Darrel.


    “Are you and Bessie ready to let me in on the whole thing?” I asked.


      Bessie cleared her throat.


    “Dear, you’re going to have to trust us. We’ve researched this for two decades. There’s still too much to tell in one sitting.“


I was half-tempted to take Viva’s box and go through it myself, but there were relationships to consider: hers and mine, as well as mine with her son. I took a deep breath. “Okay. Take me to the Brazos,” I said.


I now knew the second reason that Bessie’s attire included a broad-brimmed white hat and sunglasses. She looked as cool as a cucumber. I, on the other hand, was wondering if I might melt in the heat.


    “Well… where to begin?” Bessie mused.


    Once again I could feel her slipping into a world on the Brazos, one that wasn’t riddled with decay but still resplendent with all of its glory. Her accent became a little more southern and her voice became whispery again as she began anew.


    “Kay, to understand Jesse Cole James, you must understand the Brazos. I brought you here for a reason. I wanted you to see for yourself how grand life on the Brazos Bottoms was until the Great War that my papa used to call the War of the Lost Cause. This plantation was known as Rosebud Falls and was owned by the Isaac Martin family. We’re just below the falls on the Brazos and next to the Lang plantation I told you about yesterday. The Martins were strong southern sympathizers, and Isaac wintered Quantrell’s troops here during the Civil War.”


    “You mean Quantrell, as in Quantrell’s Raiders?” I asked.


    “None other than,” she replied. “He would come during the winters to rest his men. They’d camp right here on the banks of the Brazos. Do you see those slave shanties along the banks?” She pointed to a dilapidated row of small, rectangular shacks that bordered the ribbon of water. “They’d build their fires and pitch their tents between those shanties and the main house.”


    “Looks lonely,” I commented.


    “At least there was no shortage of food,” Bessia said. “These woods along the Brazos were full of deer and turkey. All kinds of wild game made its way to their tables as they awaited their return to the war.”


    “So Falls County was a safe haven for confederate soldiers during the War?” I asked.


    “More than that, dear. Our people welcomed them as if they were their own sons or brothers or husbands seeking refuge from the onslaught of battle. Papa would often tell of the carpet dances they held in this very house in honor of Quantrell’s men.”


    “Carpet dances?” I’d never heard the term.


    “Oh, yes. The carpets in the house would be rolled up and cleared away to make room for a dance. The musicians were mostly the slaves who played until the wee hours of the morning. The instruments were homemade … often fiddles were made out of gourds. But the music was delightful and everyone one would dance until all hours of the night. Neighbors would come from all around bringing large baskets of food and drink …”


      Her voice trailed off and she took a deep breath before continuing.


    “It was the drink that would sometimes cause a problem. Papa loved to tell about the time the men got liquored up and smashed the gourd fiddles. But that didn’t stop the dance! They just picked up tin pans and began beating them with wooden spoons as the couples continued twirling around the floor.”


    It sounded lovely … for everyone but the slaves.


Bessie didn’t see anything wrong with the situation. “Many of these very same Confederates returned to our beloved Texas after the war. Their lives and homes had been destroyed, and we offered them a new beginning. Several of Quantrell’s guerillas made their homes in and around Marlin in the years that followed.”


      I looked out beyond the shanties. I could imagine it all, just.Bessie was still talking.


      “Back then, the woods were filled with outlaws and riffraff. Isaac told Papa that you could hear the bloodhounds yelping and barking at fugitives running from the law. But Quantrell’s men formed their own vigilante party and cleared these parts out. They were the only real law in the Bottoms. They took care of those who took care of them, and they took care of their own and this included the illegitimate son of Jesse Woodson James. This is where Jesse Cole was raised.”


    About time his name came up again, I thought. And these two old ladies, trying to get at the truth. On the one hand there was Bessie, genteel in both dress and manner. She spoke carpet dances as if she had attended one last evening, yet her only knowledge came from the stories passed down by her papa, and even he would have been too young know many of these stories first-hand. The family lore sure had a strong hold on Bessie.


    On the other hand, there was Viva. Viva was a no-nonsense Arkansawyer. Her husband made his living on the river and after he died she was in a constant struggle to feed her family. Her dress was plain and her tightly curled hair made her face look sharply severe.


Yet these two women had joined forces in a decades-old search to establish the identity of Cowboy. One offered the beginning of his life, the other the end. I guess my job would be to tie these threads together to complete the life of Jesse Cole James.


    The sun had reached the top of the sky and beat down relentlessly. It was time to return to Marlin. It took little encouragement to gather everyone back into the Jeep.


    I dropped Bessie and Viva off at Bessie’s home. They were obviously nowhere through visiting, but I needed a break. The last three days had been packed with travel, people, and stories, and no time to think. I wanted some time to myself and I could think of no better place to do that than to return to Rosebud Bend. It was a beautiful, haunting oasis in the Texas prairie that mentally drew me back to its solitude. It would be a great place to process the recent events in my life.


    As I drove along the winding dirt road, I let my mind float back into my own past. I’d always been independent loner, both out of necessity and out of choice. I’d learned at an early age the advantages of “flying under the radar.”. Mother had never been particularly fond of children and the burden of pregnancy coupled with two very young offspring was more than she could handle. If fell to my father to raise me and my older brother.Perhaps this is why a relationship with Viva is so important to me.


      I would turn to books or tasks to escape the inability to connect with people. This trait served me well as I sailed through high school and college to get my degree in chemistry. When I began teaching chemistry at the University of Arkansas, I connected well with the students, but still could not form a strong personal bond with anyone. That is, until Darrell.


    Darrell was an easy-going, fun-loving, educated man who refused to take himself too seriously. Quite the opposite of me. I guess that losing his wife made him appreciate living. Anyhow, Darrell was about the best thing that ever happened to me and I didn’t want to lose him.


On the other hand, this challenge of Jesse Cole consumed me. I’m indiscriminate in my choice of puzzles. It can be chemical research or a silly poem; I’m hooked either way. But I had to balance my drive with my love or I could lose both. I could turn the Jeep around, pick up Viva and head home or … continue driving to Rosebud Bend.


    I rounded the corner that opened into the plantation.


    This time I toured the grounds at a snail’s pace. I strolled under the giant magnolia tree full of white waxy blooms, and smelled the tangy fragrance of the mimosas that permeated the air. It was easy to imagine a carpet dance in the main hall and leisurely visiting on the veranda that surrounded the house.


    I proceeded down to the slave shacks lining the river. The small rectangular boxes that once housed black families were barely four hundred square feet in size. These shacks were set on foundations of sandstone meant to give some elevation in case the Brazos left its banks.


    As I approached the entrance to the first shanty, a flat sandstone boulder caught my eye. The surface had been etched with several unusual markings reminiscent of hieroglyphics. There was a crudely carved figure that resembled a badger. There were more carvings that looked like turkey tracks. I wasn’t sure what any of it meant.  Darrel would love this rock.  I would be a peace offering. Although, it was large and heavy,I knew that I was taking this rock with me.


    I backed the jeep as close to the stone as I could get. I found a large stick and a smaller stone in order to create a fulcrum and lever to free the rock embedded in the soil. I managed to get the rock out, but now I had to get it into the Jeep. My next move was to use a long wooden plank to make a ramp to the trunk of the car. I slowly worked the stone up the ramp, finally making it to the top. I had my prize. I was excited to return to Marlin and share my good fortune with Viva.


    I found Bessie and Viva in the parlor surrounded by small piles of paper. I suppressed my curiosity about their doings because I was too engrossed in my own findings. I coaxed them out to the Jeep and opened the trunk in a real “ta-da” moment. I saw the look on Bessie’s face first. It could only be described as pure horror. I turned to Viva who shared the same expression.


    “Shut the trunk now ,” Bessie commanded me.


    I felt as if I had presented them with a bag of copperheads. But as usual I did as I was told.


    “Take it back! Take it back this minute!” she ranted.


    This sweet, simple southern lady had turned into a shrieking shrew right before my eyes. Viva was a little calmer, but no less firm.


    “Load up” she said. “You’re are taking the rock back to Rosebud Bend.”


    My patience was being pushed to the breaking point. I could feel my jaw locking as I clenched my teeth to keep from saying words I could not take back. But I did as they said. The trip seem eternal. When I rounded the same corner for the third time in this one day, I breathed a long sigh of relief. I started to reversed the process that I had completed earlier but stopped in my tracks. I opened the hatch of the Jeep and removed the spare tire from it well.  The stone fit perfectly.I needed this stone if I am to solve the mystery of Cowboy. My years of training in science overshadowed wanting to please Viva. I would not let myself by drawn into this whirlpool of emotions.I would “fly under the radar” again.


    I wanted nothing more than to go home to Darrel and forget this crazy chase for the meaning of a poem written almost a century ago. I’d been deceived and now chastised by two elderly women I hardly knew and all within a matter of days. y afternoon for rest and relief had exploded into a full-blown battle of wills that I didn’t understand.


    The ride back to town was just as long as the trip to the plantation and could not be over soon enough to suit me. I was done with the brouhaha. My intrigue and determination to complete a task was almost over shadowed by the resentment I felt at being denied full access to all of the information that I knew Bessie and Viva shared. Tomorrow I was going home. Viva in tow or not.


    Viva could sense my frustration and laid low. Bessie seemed totally disinterested in my current disposition. When we arrived at Bessie’s house I expected her to exit as quickly as possible, and that would be that. However, when I pulled into the drive, she sweetly touched my shoulder and said,


      “Come in for a while, dear.”


    Viva didn’t move. I could tell she was hesitant to influence my actions, one way or the other. I looked at Bessie with visible belligerence. She nudged me gently and repeated her request. I had not been raised to be rude to my elders and I certainly didn’t want to offend Viva, so I mustered all of the composure I could and consented to go with her.


    The parlor was in the same disarray I had viewed earlier. I scooted a small pile of papers to the side and sat down on her ancient sofa. Viva and Bessie drew chairs from the dining room and planted themselves side by side, squarely in front of me.


    “I know my actions seemed extreme to you today. But Rosebud Bend is sacred to those of us whose families fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. Yes, we lost the battle, but we didn’t lose the war … until 1916.”


    Viva took over.


    “Many of our soldiers went underground to protect the treasures that they’d managed to take from the Yankees during the war. They never missed an opportunity to steal, rob, or loot from the Union and her allies during and after the war. The gold and jewels that were confiscated were hidden in caves and abandoned mine shafts. Sentinels, as they are called, guarded these stashes, waiting for the day the Confederacy would rise again. They would make the locations with the secret codes of the Knights of the Golden Circle carved into stones. That’s what you found today. The mark of a Sentinel, a Sentinel for the KGC.”


    As I listened, I was envisioning the method by which the mystery of the electrons serving the molecules of a benzene ring was solved. It seems that the number of electrons available were insufficient to meet the conventional rule of one electron to one molecule. The scientist dreamed of a circle of snakes locked head to tail, spinning rapidly in the center of the carbon molecules creating an electron cloud, debunking the one on one requirement.


    Could it be that my quest should be to find the answer as to why all of these seemingly unrelated pieces fit the facts rather than to dismiss them completely because they do not fit conventional wisdom? The answer was yes. Truth is the truth, even if no one believes it.


Before I could say anything, Bessie said,


      “Jesse James was the head of the KGC which was closely tied with Quantrell’s army. Jesse Cole was a Sentinel.”


    “All right,” I said. “I’ve got some questions.” The rest of the afternoon swas spent as a question-and-answer session. I took notes, but I really wanted to run to the nearest library with a computer and begin my own research as to the validity of these stories. I needed to verify that Quantrell’s men came to Marlin, that Jesse Cole was raised in the Brazos, the real existence of the KGC… The list was endless. When we parted for the evening, I made arrangements for Viva to spend tomorrow with Bessie while I went on the hunt.


    Research was my forte. I could spend hours combing records and documents looking for clues. My focus on any task requiring patience and perseverance was nothing short of rabid. I was waiting to enter the Marlin library when it opened at 10:00 the next morning.


The first order of business was to place Quantrell and his men in Marlin, Falls County, Texas. My Googling skills are phenomenal but it still took hours to garner any information worth keeping. Finally, I landed on the usgenweb site and drilled down Texas and Falls County. The Falls County webpage listed “Stories of Pioneers” on the menu. I clicked and a list of personal stories from the Falls County area appeared.


When I continued to drill down, I landed on a site called “American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writer’s Project, 1936-1940.” Writers collected the pioneer stories during this time period as a part of the Works Progress Administration, when our country was in the depression.


    The Falls County page contained thirteen stories so I started reading from the top. Most were entertaining but offered little to my mission until I reached “Interview with Mr. Leroy Deam.” My eyes were tired from hours of reading on the internet but became riveted to Mr. Deam’s story beginning with page two.





Folklore – White Pioneers                                        File No. 2240


Miss Effie Cowan PW                                        Page No. 2





    “In the days before there were to communities of Odds, Stranger, Eureka, or the other little settlements on Blue Ridge, or close by, the country was part prairie, part lowland, part timber, surrounding the ridge. I can recall as a boy, how we used to roam over the wooded part, up and down the creek hunting for birds of all kinds and wild turkeys and hogs. We learned the lore of the birds and the woods, to understand the wildlife was part of our education. I was our delight to listen to the talk of older men as they discussed the latest politics of the day; or the latest hanging; or the newest committee of Vigilants that was organized to help the officers see to it that the law was upheld. For, at that time, law enforcement was yet in its infancy in Texas.


    This organization was known as “Quntrell’s Men, who were bushwhackers during the Civil War had some members that lived after the war in our little town Marlin, Texas. There were three or four whom my father knew well. These were Major Swann, a lawyer of Marlin; Stump Ashby, another lawyer, and Professor Lattimore, father of the late Professor John Lattimore, who was at one time the County School Superintendent of Falls County. After the Civil War ended and the days of Reconstruction required the best of men to help uphold the law, there was a committee of men formed called Viligants.


    These men who had belonged to Quantrell’s Organization were among the first to make Texas unsafe for criminals. The course of the law be so often delayed and not enforced cause many a man to be dealt with without recourse to a trial by jury. I remember that in our community there was an example of this. It was the hanging of one of the neighborhood men, Milt Brothers, who was accused of cattle theft …





    The article continued, but I had what I wanted. The story was almost identical to the one Bessie had shared.


My big question was where to go from here. I did believe that Quantrill’s men were in Marlin, and that Jesse James was a member of Quantrill’s band. But just how did Jesse Cole fit in? Clearly, I had a more work to do. But the hour was late and it was time to retrieve Viva.          


    When I arrived at Bessie’s, no one was around. Where on earth could two elderly ladies go? I sat on the front porch stoop and waited for an eternity in overtime. Flies buzzed about my face and arms, biting my sweaty skin at any opportune moment. Great. I’d lost Darrel’s mother and was now being punished for it. Finally, around dusk, an old Chevy Impala marked Marlin Cab Service pulled into the driveway. Viva and Bessie emerged, laughing and talking together like two old friends on an outing.


    “Where have you been?” I snapped. I was too tired and hungry to temper my anger.


Both ladies stopped short. I could tell by their disheveled appearance that they were tired, too. But the look on their faces was one of pure joy.


      “We’ve been to the Spunky Flat schoolhouse!” Viva said grinning from ear to ear.


    I racked my brain to determine the significance of the Spunky Flat schoolhouse. What an absurd name for a school, anyway.


    Viva laughed. “Spunky – Monkey. Don’t you get it? Cowboy went to the monkey rhyme schoolhouse. We found it. Well, actually, Bessiefound it. But anyway, we found Cowboy’s school, the monkey rhyme school. I was afraid that that would be the hardest of Cowboy’s riddles to solve. But Bessie did it,” she said as turned to her friend.


    “Papa had a neighbor that used to talk about Spunky Flat.  He said he lived between Big Creek and Brushy, just east of Marlin and that they had an old school house there.  It’s still there. Viva and I saw it today.  It’s an old hay barn now, but it’s still there” she said breathlessly.  “He said the kids called it the Monkey Rhyme school. I just know it Cowboy’s school!”