There was more yelling from the hills.
I said, “No, you are just a piece of trash, that is all. They say you shot a senator in the state of Texas.”
“That man threatened my life. I was justified. Everything is against me. Now I am shot by a child.”
“Get up on your feet and come across that creek before I shoot you again. My father took you in when you were hungry.”
“You will have to help me up.”
“No, I will not help you. Get up yourself.”
He made a quick move for a chunk of wood and I pulled the trigger and the hammer snapped on a bad percussion cap. I made haste to try another chamber but the hammer snapped dead again. I had not time for a third try. Chaney flung the heavy piece of wood and it caught me in the chest and laid me out backwards.
He came splashing across the creek and he jerked me up by my coat and commenced slapping me and cursing me and my father. That was his cur nature, to change from a whining baby to a vicious bully as circumstances permitted. He stuck my revolver in his belt and pulled me stumbling through the water. The horses were milling about and he managed to catch two of them by their halters while holding me with the other hand.
I heard Rooster and LaBoeuf crashing down through the brush behind us and calling out for me. “Down here! Hurry up!” I shouted, and Chaney let go of my coat just long enough to give me another stinging slap.
I must tell you that the slopes rose steeply on either side of the creek. Just as the two peace officers were running down on one side, so were Chaney’s bandit friends running down the other, so that both parties were converging on the hollow and the little mountain stream.
The bandits won the foot race. There were two of them and one was a little man in “woolly chaps” whom I rightly took to be Lucky Ned Pepper. He was still hatless. The other was taller and a quite well-dressed man in a linen suit and a bearskin coat, and his hat tied fast by a slip-string under his chin. This man was the Mexican gambler who called himself The Original Greaser Bob. They broke upon us suddenly and poured a terrible volley of fire across the creek with their Winchester repeating rifles. Lucky Ned Pepper said to Chaney, “Take them horses you got and move!”
Chaney did as he was told and we started up with the horses. It was hard climbing. Lucky Ned Pepper and the Mexican remained behind and exchanged shots with Rooster and LaBoeuf while trying to catch the other horses. I heard running splashes as one of the officers reached the creek, then a flurry of shots as he was made to retreat.
Chaney had to stop and catch his breath after thirty or forty yards of pulling me and the two horses behind him. Blood showed through on his shirt. Lucky Ned Pepper and Greaser Bob overtook us there. They were pulling two horses. I supposed the fifth horse had run away or been killed. The leads of these two horses were turned over to Chaney and Lucky Ned Pepper said to him, “Get on up that hill and don’t be stopping again!”
The bandit chieftain took me roughly by the arm. He said, “Who all is down there?”
“Marshal Cogburn and fifty more officers,” said I.
He shook me like a terrier shaking a rat. “Tell me another lie and I will stove in your head!” Part of his upper lip was missing, a sort of gap on one side that caused him to make a whistling noise as he spoke. Three or four teeth were broken off there as well, yet he made himself clearly understood.
Thinking it best, I said, “It is Marshal Cogburn and another man.”
He flung me to the ground and put a boot on my neck to hold me while he reloaded his rifle from a cartridge belt. He shouted out, “Rooster, can you hear me?” There was no reply. The Original Greaser was standing there with us and he broke the silence by firing down the hill. Lucky Ned Pepper shouted, “You answer me, Rooster! I will kill this girl! You know I will do it!”
Rooster called up from below, “The girl is nothing to me! She is a runaway from Arkansas!”
“That’s very well!” said Lucky Ned Pepper. “Do you advise me to kill her?”
“Do what you think is best, Ned!” replied Rooster. “She is nothing to me but a lost child! Think it over first.”
“I have already thought it over! You and Potter get mounted double fast! If I see you riding over that bald ridge to the northwest I will spare the girl! You have five minutes!”
“We will need more time!”
“I will not give you any more!”
“There will be a party of marshals in here soon, Ned! Let me have Chaney and the girl and I will mislead them for six hours!”
“Too thin, Rooster! Too thin! I won’t trust you!”
“I will cover you till dark!”
“Your five minutes is running! No more talk!”
Lucky Ned Pepper pulled me to my feet. Rooster called up again, saying, “We are leaving but you must give us time!”
The bandit chieftain made no reply. He brushed the snow and dirt from my face and said, “Your life depends upon their actions. I have never busted a cap on a woman or anybody much under sixteen years but I will do what I have to do.”
I said, “There is some mix-up here. I am Mattie Ross of near Dardanelle, Arkansas. My family has property and I don’t know why I am being treated like this.”
Lucky Ned Pepper said, “It is enough that you know I will do what I have to do.”
We made our way up the hill. A little farther along we came across a bandit armed with a shotgun and squatting behind a big slab of limestone. This man’s name was Harold Permalee. I believe he was simpleminded. He gobbled at me like a turkey until Lucky Ned Pepper made him hush. Greaser Bob was told to stay there with him behind the rock and keep a watch below. I had seen this Mexican gambler fall from Rooster’s shots at the dugout but he appeared now to be in perfect health and there was no outward evidence of a wound. When we left them there Harold Permalee made a noise like “Whooooo-haaaaaaa!” and this time it was The Greaser who made him hush.
Lucky Ned Pepper pushed me along in front of him through the brush. There was no trail. His woolly chaps sang as they swished back and forth, something like corduroy trousers. He was little and wiry and no doubt a hard customer, but still his wind was not good and he was blowing like a man with asthma by the time we had ascended to the bandits’ lair.
They had made their camp on a bare rock shelf some seventy yards or so below the crest of the mountain. Pine timber grew in abundance below and above and on all sides. No apparent trails led to the place.
The ledge was mostly level but broken here and there by deep pits and fissures. A shallow cave provided sleeping quarters, as I saw bedding and saddles strewn about inside. A wagon sheet, now pulled back, served for a door and windbreak. The horses were tied in the cover of trees. It was quite windy up there and the little cooking fire in front of the cave was protected by a circle of rocks. The site overlooked a wide expanse of ground to the west and north.
Tom Chaney was sitting by the fire with his shirt pulled up and another man was ministering to him, tying a pad of cloth to his wounded side with a cotton rope. The man laughed as he cinched the rope up tight and caused Chaney to whimper with pain. “Waw, waw, waw,” said the man, making sounds like a bawling calf in mockery of Chaney.
This man was Farrell Permalee, a younger brother to Harold Parmalee. He wore a long blue army overcoat with officers’ boards on the shoulders. Harold Parmalee had participated in the robbery of the Katy Flyer and Farrell joined the bandits later that night when they swapped horses at Ma Permalee’s place.
The Permalee woman was a notorious receiver of stolen livestock but was never brought to law. Her husband, Henry Joe Permalee, killed himself with a dynamite cap in the ugly act of wrecking a passenger train. A family of criminal trash! Of her youngest boys, Carroll Permalee lived long enough to be put to death in the Electric Chair, and not long afterward Darryl Permalee was shot to death at the wheel of a motorcar by a bank “dick” and a constable in Mena, Arkansas. No, do not compare them to Henry Starr or the Dalton brothers. Certainly Starr and the Daltons were robbers and reckless characters but they were not simple and they were not altogether rotten. You will remember that Bob and Grat Dalton served as marshals for Judge Parker, and Bob was a fine one, they say. Upright men gone bad! What makes them take the wrong road? Bill Doolin too. A cow-boy gone wrong.