The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell Page A

must’ve hurt him to do.
    “Let us save one,” I said. I pulled Alf Bowden from the line, he being so limp he fell at my touch. “We can send him back to General Ewing, maybe, as a witness that his new law will cut both ways.”
    There was blood in the air. It drifted over my bare hands, spotting them like some rare mist. Alf Bowden was yet on his knees, his hands clutching at my legs, pulling himself toward me. The rare mist had freckled one of his cheeks, and his hair had been touched up at the ends by the same breeze, giving him a vaguely pheasant aspect.
    The man and wife in the feather bed slept now, and the silence was glass, poised for the shatter.
    “We all had friends,” Coleman Younger said. He chambered another round. He was staring at me more thoughtfully than I found comfortable. “That is all off now.”
    “There is something to be gained by this sparing,” I said. I did not believe what I had said, but I said it, and hoped only to utter more dream-babble that would justify it.
    “I yearn to hear about it,” Coleman Younger said.
    I was losing a comrade, this I could see. I had no retort.
    A murderer of slyer instincts saved me and made of me a hero. Captain Quantrill had cozied up to us as we were engaged. He held a palm toward Coleman Younger, Little Arch, and Pitt Mackeson, who was fiddling with something near his holster. He then fixed me with a reverent gaze, an approving light coming to his eyes.
    Alf Bowden babbled into my toes, his arms encircling my boots, his face between them.
    “I quite see it,” Captain Quantrill said. “Yes. We shall send him over to Sigel’s brigade of Dutchmen near Warrensburg.” Captain Quantrill worked his hands together as if to wash them. His feet were moving in little hops, and he would surely have danced had there been a suitable partner handy. “Oh, yes. They far outnumber us. They will want to make quick time and to do that they will come through Creve Coeur Gap. Oh, my, yes.”
    His plan could not be missed. Creve Coeur Gap was a narrow slit between two long bluffs that flanked the Blackwater River. General Franz Sigel, alerted by the winner from my mistake, and our most hated enemy, would seek the shortest route to our destruction—through the tall bluffs, thick timber, and slender passage afforded by Creve Coeur Gap.
    “Just so,” I said.
    Coleman Younger and the others began to nod, then smile at me, their lips raising only on one side of their mouths.
    “Jake Roedel,” Coleman Younger said. “You are brilliant with mercy.”
    I had not foreseen this plan, but I was giving thanks for its arrival on more than one score. It had saved me my comrades and blessed me with an opportunity named Franz Sigel. He was called a general, and to Yankees and Dutchmen he was so. His very name herded furies into my heart. In my father’s household he had been a saint, or near enough to it to have his picture above the mantel. He drummed up Dutchmen from among those foreigners who had come to America wanting to remain so. He oppressed me, and I longed to sight in on him. I had seen him lure them on, making himself a patriarch for those who would not mix, leading them to Fit Mit Sigel. Oh, the battles my father and I had on Sigel’s account. We raged in his language, my face puffing, and his blue stubborn eyes glowing beneath his thick Prussian brows. He will keep you foreign, I said, and make you snobs about it. Is this wrong? was his reply. We never agreed; I chose to side with Americans and lost entry to the house that raised me.
    I led Alf Bowden to a stew pot and fed him.
    The brilliance of mercy being a thing that requires judicious use, the other Yankees died. Two shots.
    When Alf Bowden could once more keep his feet beneath himself, we set him off on foot toward Sigel’s brigade. It was over twenty miles, and he could not arrive there before dawn.
    Around the campfires that night we cleaned our pistols, as we carried from four to eight apiece, the many