A Terrible Secret Wrong Thing
A FICTION (And I Hope It Stays One)
August 13, 1925.
Now, I am about to relate to you, a story that I am not proud of, but it has to be told. It all began on a Thursday evening, when the wind was up and gusty, And… well... it was a Bad wind. Carried a smell on it, that… well, let’s say, I haven’t smelled it since.
That was when we went to bury all those boys outside of Nacogdoches,
The ones that were killed by the Border Men…
…had to bury a lot of Border Men, too,
…had to do it before morning, when the Government Soldiers were due in.
Well, I guess I had better tell you about it.
The fight started in the baking heat of the Texas sun, about twelve minutes into the afternoon, when about seventy smugglers and a thousand boys decided to charge a line that had been set up by the Border Men across the cracked clay of what was left of Gene Whistler’s ranch, all the way down to Wiley’s Creek. That's the Wiley’s Creek that runs into the old limestone quarry, the small quarry that nobody claims to own, the one where Kuruk’s band – Apaches! – hid out for three years, before they moved on…
Well… it’s not a quarry, anymore… but… more about that, later.
One minute, the smugglers and the boys were turning around, like they were going to go back to Mexico, and the next, they were howling and yelling and throwing rocks and running like wolves at the line of Border Men.
I don’t think the Border Men liked that, and they weren’t a very patient sort, either, because they opened fire on all those boys and men like they were starved coyotes, and they fell like wheat at the harvest.
But they didn’t get all of them, you see, and so the charge overwhelmed the Border Men, all except one mean old coot named George Benson, who they had set up on a little ridge back away from the line, and him, with a gatling gun.
Now George Benson was the kind of man, who had said every bad thing about Apaches that can be said, and I won’t repeat any of it here, but I am afraid I have to say, he had about the same opinion of pretty much everybody else, too.
Nobody knew for sure, how he got so mean, except they say his Poppa whupped him every day with a leather strop, even when he was good.
Guess that would have made anybody go bad.
Anyway, mean old George Benson saw all those men and boys coming, and his hat fairly split a seam, I guess, because he started up that gatling gun,spraying bullets back and forth, and screaming all kinds of swear words, 'til there wasn’t nearly a thing left alive across the whole horizon: smuggler, boy, or Border Man.
In fact, he kept right on going, until he was out of bullets, and the gun was making a kind of clickety-clack, and he finally realized, he was out… and stopped turning the crank!
I am told, by those who care about such things, that he used up fourteen hundred rounds!
Then, he got a pair of binoculars, and he looked out, just like he was sightseeing. I guess he figured out, by then, that most of the Border Men were dead,
And all of them were down, because of him, and he got scared… and ran off!
This all occurred, within the space of fifteen minutes, I know, I was there, hiding under my brand new truck, which was all shot full of holes, and – I tell you, for a minute, it made me feel funny – the bed was all full of picks and brand new shovels.
Tuck Brown, one of the Border Men, had a kind heart, and he had kind of figured on talking the boys and the smugglers, too, into a bit of work for a day’s pay, before they were sent back home.
Of course, there were only FIFTY shovels and a few picks – guess he wasn’t expecting so many!
Anyway, here I was, with a truckful of shovels and picks – and ONE hoe! – and all about me, as far as the eye could see, was a field full of men and boys, in need of… burial.
Now, Hurley Carver was the only other one to see what happened – except about fourteen of the Border Men survived, but they were all shot up – and HE was only there, to cook a hot lunch for the Border Men.
He had taken a bullet in the arm, but had bound it up, and the minute George Benson ran off, he had unhitched his trailer and roared off to town, to tell the Sheriff of Nacogdoches.
HE, then, called the Border Patrol office, which phoned up the Governor, who had promised to send Government Soldiers, but not until the morning, as they were stationed clear up at Fort Graham.
So, about a half an hour later, the mayor of Nacogdoches drove up in a fit and started shouting orders, which there was nobody left to obey, but me, and Hurley, who had come with him.
So, I just sat there, unwilling to do anything, until there was more help.
I suppose, I should have been ministering to the wounded, but I tell you, fellow, I was in shock.
Though it should have taken at least a bullet to drive me to that state, I tell you, I was broken in the very bottom of my soul, to see every last living person, but fourteen, taken in fifteen minutes off to Jesus. It was the very SIZE of the thing, you see.
And… the smell… The smell of blood, that is, and of dead men and boys, lying in the hot sun. It rightly both took me aback, and weakened me, so that I had to sit, with a kerchief over my mouth and nose.
The Mayor, whose name was ‘Broad’ Mackenzie, ‘Broad’, because he was almost as wide as he was tall, came waddling up and began shouting curses at me, and gesturing out across the field, and crying, which I don’t blame him for, as it was such a sad thing to see. I turned to him, and, as soon as I could stand to, I removed the kerchief from my mouth and nose, and I said, ‘Mayor, if you’re of a mind to, you could start in a-burien’ them boys, but I am in no such condition, yet, t’ do so m’self. There’re shovels ‘n the back of the truck, there…” But he just stood there, sweating, and crying, and getting red in the face, so I got up, opened the door of the cab, and felt around under the seat, until I found a bottle of whisky I had hidden there, and I offered him a swig, which he took. Then, he took another, a long one, and he muttered, “what’re we goin’ t’do? What’re we goin’ t’do?” I couldn’t say as I had an answer to THAT, so I gestured to him, to give me the bottle back, and he did, and I wiped off the neck with my kerchief, and took a drink m’self. ‘Twas then, that Hurley came up to us, and he… had a PLAN.
“Now, I owe as all these men more’n likely have wives and fam’lies,” he said, “but with this sun, they’ll be all swelled up and stinking, and not fit to be carted out of here for burial, in a HOUR,” (he said the ‘H’ in ‘HOUR’, when he pronounced it, and I, for the life of me, could not tell why, but he did) “in a HOUR, they’ll all be unfit, y’see, and, by the time them Government Soldiers get here, why, they’ll mess everything up, and escort all the wives and children out here t’see…” he gestured at the field, “all THIS. Well, I say, it ain’t fittin’! We shou’d bury ‘em all, nice and decent like, take down the names, and suchwhat, and then the SHERIFF can write up a nice letter to each of their wives and fam’lies, and they won’t have to come on out here and see NONE of this,” he finished, nodding matter-of-factly. I have to say, that I owed that old Hurley had said the best words I had heard said yet, about the whole thing, but I still had to cover my mouth and nose, so I just nodded, respectfully. “I’ve a whole load of shovels piled up in my truck,” I said, well as I could, through the kerchief, “an’ I THINK a whole bunch of us fellows could probably bury all SEVENTY of those Border Men before morning comes, but… what about all them boys and men?” (By ‘men’, I, of course, meant, ‘the smugglers’, but it didn’t do any good service to decency t’ speak of them like that, once they were dead…)
Then, the Mayor upped and did a remarkable thing. Without shouting or swearing, or crying, as he had done before, he volunteered quietly, to go back to town, and to order the Sheriff to round up a posse of a hundred men, who could come up and do the job quickly and decently. Hurley nodded with satisfaction, as old ‘Broad’ shuffled off, but I said, again, “what about all them boys and men?” I guess neither of us had an answer for that, so we both set down in the shade of my truck, to be out of the sun, and to wait, and drink whiskey, until the posse came.
It was about two-thirty of the after-noon when the posse showed up, and by then, the stink had become so huge, I was almost to gagging on it. Old George Benson, of course, was nowhere to be found, but some of the Sheriff’s own men, who seemed to know what they were about, went up to examine the gatling gun, which had done most of the killing. The rest of them, (who had all wrapped kerchiefs around their faces, soaked in vinegar, to help with the smell) came on up to the truck, and owed as how they were sorry to see all this, and took shovels and picks – and even the HOE – and went off to begin their grim business.
Every man, I found out later, had been sworn to secrecy, as the killing of Federal Agents (which the Border Men WERE, of course) was a Federal crime, and meant to be investigated by the other Government Men who were due in tomorrow. But, you see, we just didn’t have TIME to wait for all that, not with the bodies rotting, and all of us sure that the Government Soldiers would bring down the fam’lies to this awful, forsaken place, and all of ‘em to see their young men, looking like THAT… Hurley was right, it just wasn’t fitting!
Well, by five minutes to six, all the Border Men had been decently laid to rest, each one with a simple marker – a cross – and his name on it, but none of us knew just WHAT to do, with a thousand boys and men. Thank God, by then, a bold wind had picked up, one that, mercifully, blew all that stink off into the quarry. ‘Twas then, that I had a thought. “Why’nt we bury all those men and boys in the quarry?” I said, sick at heart, that none of them would ever see their families again. “We could throw them all in, and then put in wedges, and bury ‘em all under a landslide of limestone! Why’nt we bury all those men and boys in the quarry?” I asked, again, and enough of the posse men were nodding their heads, that I could tell, as they owed, it was a good idea. So, I got up my gumption, and went and found a bottle of vinegar in one of the cars that had brought the posse men, and soaked m’own kerchief with vinegar, so as I could stand the smell, and then, Hurley and I got into the truck, and some posse men rode in the back, and we drove out across the field, to pick up the men and the boys.
They were mostly Mexican Indians, Aztecs, I b’lieve, the sort that commonly came up to the border in droves during the harvest months, hoping to get hired to harvest sorghum. But a few (mostly smugglers, I expect) were white men, who had hoped to profit by bringing cheap labor to the sorghum plantations. Thing was, as far as we could tell, them being dead and all, and without any identification, and never have supposed to have been in that place, at all, none of them had any names that we could find out, and that… was a sad thing.
Now the posse men, I have to allow, did as fine a job as any ordinary men could, at burying those boys and men with some modicum of respect, which, of course, they ought to have done. A few of them wept, as they did it, which I kindly turned away from, when I saw it, as I didn’t desire that they should feel embarrassed. It seems, some wise soul had brought in about a thousand flour sacks, and the posse men covered the Aztecs with them as well as they could, and, as gently as possible (which wasn’t very, as it was quite a drop), they threw them over the side of the quarry.
Well, near about eight-thirty, the posse men formed themselves up in a line, and walked the whole field, going shoulder-to-shoulder, in order to find anybody that had been missed. Not one boy, or one smuggler had survived – leastaways, none that we SAW… if any had lived, he had run off. I was grieved at this, for he could have, at least, given us some names, or some clue, to determining the identity of the boys and men, whom we were now throwing into the quarry, for to bury them deep in a landslide of limestone, which would be the only marker of that lonely mass grave.
Now, among the posse men, I found, there was a minister, who had come along to do whatever good he could, and he stood at the cliff, as the other men of the posse threw the bodies over, whispering prayers for the dead, and HE at least, GAVE them names: Juan, Jose, Santiago, Miguel… these were a few of the names he chose. When at last, the last person had been found, we scraped back the soil from the top of the cliff, down about six inches, to where the limestone was exposed, and we made holes in the rock with rock drills, which are iron spikes with a carbon-steel head fused onto them, and then we planted wedges in the holes, and tied ropes to our bumpers, and pulled on those stakes, until the whole side of the cliff came thundering down, and it covered the bodies.
There are some who claimed, that Wiley’s creek ran red for days after that, but I never found any credibility in that, for those bodies were buried under an avalanche of rock, that must have been millions of tons. A stonemason was called, and we had a small marker made, that said, ‘here lie those, who need not have died, but for the folly of mean George Benson’. (I suppose we were wrong, to blame it all on him, but each one of us had anger buried deep in his heart, buried deep as those men and boys were buried at the bottom of the quarry, and I suppose that it had to seep up through the limestone formations in our hearts, just as some said, the blood had seeped up through the rock in the quarry.) At any rate, no-one came looking for those boys and men, and, although the Sheriff of Nacogdoches had flyers made up, and sent down men who spoke Mexican Spanish, into all of the northern villages South of the Border, no-one ever laid claim to any of them.
So, who they were, and where they had come from, I guess, will remain for us, the Terrible Secret Wrong Thing that was done outside Nacogdoches.
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