Go Down Together by Jeff Guinn

Author:Jeff Guinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

CHAPTER 21

Buck and Blanche

Doctors Keith Chapler and Robert Osborn were performing an early-morning tonsillectomy in Dexter on the 24th of July when the posse arrived at their office with Buck and Blanche. Surgery was interrupted while the physicians tended to their emergency patients. Buck was coherent enough to tell them that the only treatment he’d received was hydrogen peroxide poured directly into the hole in his head, plus some aspirin. Chapler and Osborn thought that primitive care had been surprisingly effective. The head wound was relatively clean. Buck was in more pain from several bullet wounds he’d received in Dexfield Park, particularly one from a .45 slug that struck him in the back, glanced off a rib, and lodged in his chest. The Dexter doctors recommended that he be transferred immediately to King’s Daughters Hospital in nearby Perry.

Blanche’s only injuries were from the glass in her eyes. Her main concern was for her husband. At first the lawmen tried to keep them separated, but finally Blanche was allowed to join Buck where he lay on a stretcher on the floor. He asked for a cigarette. Blanche lit it for him, then was taken to another room to have her eyes examined. She never saw Buck again.

Chapler and Osborn went with Buck to Perry, where they performed surgery the same day to remove the bullet from his chest. Afterward, their prognosis was grim—Buck would die either from his head wound or else from pneumonia resulting from the chest surgery. It was only a matter of days.

News of the ambush and Buck’s capture and imminent death reached West Dallas that same day. Cumie immediately prepared to leave for Iowa. Though he was the archenemy of her sons, Dallas County sheriff Smoot Schmid showed considerable compassion toward the grieving mother, meeting with Cumie and providing a letter of introduction to the Iowa authorities. In it, Schmid asked that she be allowed to see Buck. L.C. accompanied Cumie, and so did Emma and Billie Jean Parker. May Turner, a friend of Blanche’s, made the trip, too. Before they left early Tuesday morning, Cumie told a Dallas Morning News reporter that “I don’t care what people say, they’re my boys and I love them.” In denial as always, she added, “I don’t believe they’ve done all the things they’re accused of.” Schmid or one of his officers provided money for travel expenses, another generous gesture.

While they were on the way, riding in a Model T Ford driven by L.C.—the drive took thirty-six hours—two Arkansas lawmen came to Perry to question Buck before he died. Under heavy guard in his hospital bed, Buck was almost chatty as he greeted Crawford County sheriff Albert Maxey and Alma deputy Red Salyers. They arrived already convinced that Buck was the killer of Henry Humphrey—the pistol taken from Humphrey during the June 23 gunfight outside Alma was among the many weapons recovered by the posse at the gang’s Dexfield Park campsite. Buck was quick to confess. When he entered Buck’s hospital room on July 25, Salyers asked, “Do you remember me?” Buck replied, “I sure do.

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