Wanted! Belle Starr! by J.T. Edson

Author:J.T. Edson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: belle starr, western ebook, jt edson, wild west ebook, best western ebook online, oklahoma outlaws, outlaws 1880s usa
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing

Chapter Sixteen – I Know Who He Was

“Belle Starr,” Geoffrey Crane interrupted, before the first part of his question could be answered, remembering the colorful accounts of various illicit activities attributed to the bearer of that name he had read in newspapers and magazines. Staring in something akin to disbelief at the woman he did not doubt had saved him from serious injury and, if she had spoken the truth, perhaps even death, he went on, “But I’ve always heard you were beauti… They say you’re a criminal.”

“And what they say is true, whoever they might be,” the lady outlaw admitted without shame or annoyance, regarding the slighting reference to her appearance as a tribute to her skill in adopting a disguise. xvii “In fact, being a criminal is how I came to know the man you’re after.”

“You know David Icke?”

“I know of him as ‘David Icke’. And I know who he was too!”

“Who he was?” the young Bostonian queried, sensing from the way the comment had been made that the knowledge was not pleasant for the woman walking by his side.

“Back in those days, he was calling himself ‘Raymond Buckton’,” Belle explained, her tone bitter under its otherwise cultured Southern drawl. “He was one of those carpetbagger scum who came crawling like lice into the Indian Nations and all through the South after the war, looting and relying for protection on Yankee blue-bellies led by the likes of Smethurst—!”

“Do you mean the General Smethurst who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan not too long ago?” Crayne inquired, allowing himself to be guided away from the area given over to cattle shipping pens and towards what appeared to be the poorer section of Mulrooney without anybody challenging their right to depart.

“The same, except that it wasn’t murder,” the lady outlaw confirmed definitely. “And, although I don’t doubt that the Klan would have counted it an honor to have rid the world of him, they didn’t do it.” xviii

“What did Ic—Buckton do to you?” Crayne asked, deciding there was nothing to be gained by discussing such an emotive subject further and being more interested in finding the connection with the man for whom he had developed so great a hatred.

“Nothing personally!”

“Then why—?”

“He had himself appointed as Land Commissioner, or some such fancy title, for the Muskogee district of the Nations and he surely showed us Johnny Rebs what Yankee Reconstruction meant. Folks were made to sell off their land for a fraction of its worth, supposedly to be used as farms for freed slaves; although none ever came and it wound up being owned by white Yankees.”

“There was more to it than just that, though?” Crayne hinted, being sufficiently fair minded to concede there had been many injustices perpetrated upon Southrons in the name of Reconstruction.

“Plenty more,” Belle agreed. “Those who wouldn’t sell peaceably were run off, or killed by his men. One of the families who wouldn’t sell and didn’t run were real close kin of mine. Buckton got liquored up one night and led the bunch who went to wipe them out.

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