Recollections of a Western Deputy - "Daily Star Interview: Deputy B. In Retirement" [Closing Out The Fictional Character of Deputy B.]

The Daily Star sent its Star Reporter, its only reporter, out to the "Deputy B. Equestrian Ranch" where the B. family rears and sells from a stock of 92 all white Palomino horses on 460 acres in the now unincorporated north side of town.  Deputy B.'s stud stock have individually sold for as much as $2,000 to $3,000 to owners that include those in Kentucky and New York to as far away as Ireland.  6 trained horses put through paces of dance steps and various balance tricks have been sold to Austria-Hungary as a set for $16,000 by an emissary that bought them here and took delivery at our town's train depot on August 11, 1909; as many Daily Star readers will still freshly recall. 

 On a cold blustery day of October 10, 1910, the 66 year old Retired Deputy B. and his wife graciously met with this reporter to ask him about what led to his retirement.  Sitting at a Kitchen table, drinking never ending fresh coffee and a delicious assortment of Danish and Dutch cookies and pastries, I asked the former Deputy B. many questions, and upon review of my notes, Mr. B. consented only to a release of the following.  The rest Mrs. B., some 12 years his junior,  politely took up at gunpoint with a smile and burned in the kitchen's massive cast iron stove.  Mrs. B., as some readers may recall, only 2 years ago made the infamous 1400 yard near dead center shot of a 4 inch by 4 inch cast iron plate 6 times out of 6 times.  She commented at the time, "Just in case my husband gets any ideas.  He may ride away fast on his horse, but rest assured, he can't out run a bullet from this experimental .50 caliber rifle the *** (Name withheld by request) *** Company made as a gift to me, just for that purpose." 

A popular sentiment expressed by the Town Council, which was remembered next election and stated at the time was, "Unfortunately for us,  she never used it."
 But fortunately, a new broom sweeps clean, and with private advice and guidance by Mr. B. to an entirely new town council, many of whom owed their lives to the former Deputy B. one way or another, the town has boomed into prosperity, shipping many goods as a united combine by rail to more than 6 major cities, and we have entered a time where it is Cornucopia for our fair town and all its citizens.  

Daily Star:   

     Mr. B.  Our readers have been stopping by and asking by the many dozens about why you retired.  Many of them are either new to the community or hear conflicting stories that change with every year as to what led you to retire.   

Mr. B.: 

      I find that kind of curious, as I thought it was without question as why.  I don't know what gossip you are hearing, but I am not aware of what you mean.       
     I had a large part in helping this town be a fit place to live, and bear many scars and old wounds to prove it.   

    My time and way of being a law man was for what was suited for the past.  Certain attorneys came and tried to make laws against spitting and all sorts of Eastern notions, and then tried to extort monies.  When each and every one of the 4 of them disappeared, as if they dropped off the face of the Earth, I was accused of being participant.  Even my eldest son Winchester Winston B. was named as a co-conspirator, and we were both charged and then counter-sued for slander and libel, winning YOUR newspaper before selling it off to someone more sensible about printing facts rather than reckless accusations and unfounded conjecture.  When the wife was publicly denounced by the town prosecutor, and with a right cross to the jaw broke it in 3 places, and with a left uppercut broke 2 of his floating ribs, after several days of heated animosity in Court and being acquitted by the jury, as a condition of all charges dropped and no civil action by a judge threatening to set the acquittal verdict aside and sentence the wife to 5 years instead, I retired.  He soon after got lung fever and died less than 2 weeks later. 

 Oh well, another soul rightly died and gone to hell.  

[Deputy B. to his wife]     What?  Ich spreche....   Ja, ja....  Nein.  Nein.  Ich nicht.  

[Continues]   While the Mrs. says to not write that, you keep that last statement as a direct quote from me.   

  I retired in 1897, and here it is 13 years later and a new century with sorcery gadgets like the telephone and mechanical devices that repeat voices and music and events as if in some ethereal communication of what was, and now moving pictures can silently play on a whitewashed wall as if ghosts are now our play acting friends.  
  
When I was a boy of 12 in Virginia,  for that year and the next 3 years,  I spent summers fishing up to 200 or 300 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, and survived 3 wrecks in several of  the worst storms sailors must ever face.   A man cannot see what we saw nor experience what we experience and not take faith in GOD's Holy Word, The Bible.  How we most identified with "They who go down to the sea and ships" and the cries of the Apostles of the LORD crying out for their rescue as they drown in  His presence as though He were one asleep.  

In the year I retired, it was just as well, for the most part we are pacified and so civilized now that the job wasn't needing me anymore.  The West and the folk here were for the most of a sublime and serene character now, and I wanted to spend time with my grandchildren and enjoy being home regular with the Mrs., who just be able to behold, is a joy and a pleasure I cannot express into words.  

It is a point of honor when there was only envy and contempt springing forth, and then by a public attempt of open shame approved by the Town Council and many others.  

A few years ago the town hosted a mock play on my life, and there was a line where the actor who poorly tried to portray me once said, “I will shoot you down like a dog and you will be deader than a shovel under running water.”  The victim on stage covered up his groin with an iron skillet and begged for mercy, saying, "If you must shoot me, shoot me anywhere but there!" 

     It was no secret that in the last lustrum of my service especially, that is the last 5 years that ended in '97, I felt a great dissatisfaction and disappointment that my legacy wasn't being remembered with thankfulness of all the good I did for this Community and this State, both for when it was a territory and now that it is a State.  I KNEW was a very important part in securing the peace, but now it was mostly here, since folks were not inclined to remember me with thankfulness for my legacy...mosey around that hill.  

[Deputy B. to his wife]  Cafe, bitte.  Feelin danke.    

Daily Star: 

     Could you elaborate for our readers what you mean by not being remembered with thankfulness for your legacy?

Mr. B.:  

     Well, it's this way.  For many years people have been emotional captured by the often brief exploits of those such as Wild Bill, Bat, Buffalo Bill, Wyatt, and various others.  I believe my much longer record of law enforcement and protecting the lives and promoting the peace of the local citizens has far outdone them all, yet when a Lantern Slide Show came to town in 1896, what was I remembered for in the 147 slides of cartoon illustrations that were a tribute to me? 

A Lantern Slide of me jumping off a rodeo platform and landing where I split a rail between my legs.

 A Lantern Slide of me going into a burning house to save lives, and it blowing up, and a fat ugly actress daring to play the part of my wife pulling wood debris off of me as I lay in the rubble. 

 A Lantern Slide of me saving what looked like a puppy dog, instead of my infant daughter Lottie, and instead of throwing the dog to safety and being carried off, the actor is hoof beaten into a muddy street.

A Lantern slide of folks at Rustler’s pass holding iron skillets over their private appendages of manliness.    

A Lantern slide of folks down in Chihuahua Mexico doing the same, holding iron skillets over their private appendages of manliness; when it was actually central Texas. 

A Lantern slide of somewhere in the Shanghai Orient regions where they did the same, holding iron skillets over their private appendages of manliness; when I have never been there and have only traveled the continents of North America and Europe. 

A Lantern slide of when I chased a bank robber several years earlier over several roof tops three stories high and accidentally jumped into a vat of molasses.  

Followed by a Lantern slide of me chasing the bank robber into Sven's stable where he had a haystack height of goose feathers.  Then a Lantern slide of me covered in goose feathers head to foot, armed with one six shooter (I had two) chasing the robber while the wife chased me with  a pitchfork and Kenneth Beavers the butcher chased close behind with a meat axe with the worded caption, "I will get me a giant chicken for tomorrow's Sunday dinner."  The wife had a .40-.40 and shot the robber dead as I fell over a small attacking dog, as he turned and fired.  My shot castrated him, and the wife shot him dead, so she got the $386 reward by judgement at a coroner's inquest.  The rest of the reward that should have went to me, went to damages of ruining a vat of molasses and a pile of goose feathers.  

147 slides, and not one that showed I was the main obstacle in this town and county and parts far beyond to 23 robber gangs and a minimum count of at least 876 criminals in just the local Court Records (and perhaps twice that in all), many of them murderers, from taking root and being a blight to this whole part of the country.  

Not one slide showed how I avenged Marshall Jackson and Sheriff Bond and how that my own wife and children engaged their killers in a gun battle that riddled my house with more than 200 bullets and near killed my daughter.  

I took offense because it was as if no one remembers how I and a few of my fellow “Sons of the Confederacy” were the first to fight back against the Sioux war parties in November 1883, which the Federal Government demanded never be spoken of again and to pretend it never happened.  

I took offense because it was as if no one remembers that in April 1882 the Carnival Sharpshooter named Blunt and his gang of 36, shot Marshall Jackson's littlest niece dead, shot my horse down on top of me and put more than 80 bullets in him while trying to shoot me as I was pinned under him, or that they robbed the Wells and Fargo and blew up the bank across the street, and it was Marshall Jackson especially and me close by that stopped most of them...not to forget Horseshot Harry's role in what happened.  No sir.  

The legacy that near 286 people sitting and standing and all viewing the Lantern Slides with riotous and even near deafening loud  volumes of laughter
concurred with was that my making the Community safe for women and children, ensuring most families had at least something to eat from Beth's General Store or giving out no interest personal loans that some took as many as 7 years to pay me back, if they did at all, all of that kindness and charity was as if for naught because so  many often joined in to add insult along with their loud and continuous laughter.

Consequently, after it was over and the crowd left, the slides were confiscated at gunpoint and burned.  Furthermore,  the scoundrel left the county  with two loads of rock salt that were expressly double barrel shotgun salted into his britches by party or parties unknown, and since the statute of limitations long expired, now almost twice expired, and since I collect no stipend for my services as a Federal Deputy United States Marshall now retired, it no longer matters that you know.

      Between the War for the Southern Confederacy and serving as deputy Marshall, which included a de facto pro tem as Sheriff as well as Deputy Sheriff contemporaneously when Marshall Jackson and Sheriff Bond were alive, between 1861 and 1894, I was shot or grazed some 28 times, stabbed or knife sliced in a stabbing motion more than 31 times, had 14 bones cracked or bruised or broke at various times, was beaten and cut open with whips and other devices upon capture and prior to escape in both the War for the Southern Confederacy and as a Deputy Marshall, and presently Doc Owens states that I have near 500 inches of scars all over my body. I do not wish what I have borne up with to be upon those who know little more than a couple of sheep wandering up to a Cattleman in Cattle country, and in many ways are only half as intelligent.  

    
In many ways we are still not much removed from being a frontier, even though I can no longer ride 900 miles through 5 states and territories without ever seeing a single road, and at best only some Indian or animal trails, human nature whether extroverted or introverted never really changes.  

 

 

Daily Star:

     Have you furthered your life story in publication since your book and several magazine publications?  

Mr. B.:

     I discussed my life story for publication, and while it was verified as all true at least 8 times over, these events and recollections are considered too violent or too indecent for the general public consumption.  There are 3 copies at the Army War College that I know of, where they consider it as if a banned "blue" book.  But it is on the shelves there for now, though they originally had 8, then 5, and are now down to 3.  While a second and third printing of 1200 more copies each were printed and distributed,and all sold, I am told that they have been mostly bought up by one or two wealthy financiers who promptly burned them and threatened to run any publisher into insolvency should more be printed.  So it may be likely that  I will eventually go into history as a forgotten man, as even all the newspapers say that even the mere mention of me will ruin standing and bring about financial ruin.  So that being said, if you print this, you will not be picked up by those outside our town for republication.  In St. Louis, and in Washington City, all records of my service as a Federal Deputy Marshall are said to have been "lost" as if I now have never existed to them.  I am already a forgotten man because of a hatred of my service to the Confederacy during the Great War or whatever motivation that lay behind the loss of those records.  And if you or I exist already in a state of  being continuously and purposely forgotten, how will anyone know in future generations that you even existed, or to them in the future, existed here in their past long before they were born?  Only those of a first or second generation, or perhaps a third might retain your history, which becomes legend, and then no longer matters if it is retained by a fourth generation at all.  

Daily Star:  

         What are your plans for the future?

Mr. B.:  

     Besides my tending horses, and having profitable financial interests in 8 businesses and 10 farms, I and Mrs. B. and a few of her relatives and in-laws during the months of April to October (with exceptions for those from farms called to take time off for their own harvest responsibilities at home) are educating and feeding our now many grandchildren and the children of our extended family and friends, teaching them history and culture,  as well as crafts and trades, and the children weekly and sometimes daily earn food and wages to take home "to boot", which they turn over to their happy and proud parents.    

Daily Star: 

     Thank you Deputy B. for your time and the wonderful hospitality you have shown the Daily Star, and for your service to our town over these many years, and for personally saving my life on two separate occasions, once as a child in a burning building where my father tried to kill us all, and once when our Church social I along with many other children at the time was almost stampeded to death.

Mr. B.:  

    You are most very welcome, sir.  I graciously thank you and ask that you pay your brothers and sisters my kind respects.  I am so pleased that all of you turned out to be such fine examples of common decency and courtesy and great assets to the Community.  My condolences to the most recent passing of your mother.  She was a good friend to the Mrs. and to Beth.  She will surely be missed and remembered always fondly and with affection as a good friend of ours.  My thanks also to the Sons of the Confederacy and what few hundred founding town members there are left among us.  

And tell the readers,  keep trusting and reading the Bible; especially being well versed in the Gospels.   It recently used to be that atheists were banned from serving on jury duty because of it was factually known that their irrational belief processes are known to be a  mental defect in their reasoning processes.  In reality, that mental defect hasn't changed, and don't let a mental defect make you doubt what you know to be true.  Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life.  Who would know better, the Creator who became a man to make simple faith in Him atone for a lack of faith by Adam, or a mental defect who denies the very laws of nature and demands to be called the progeny of a monkey, so as if he were caged with one of the opposite sex, perhaps it would be reasonable to him to mate with an actual gorilla or babboon.  Don't be tricked by these mentally defective atheists!    Thank you kindly.  

[[This winds up the Deputy B. series of stories.  My work product.  Thanks.  -- Brianroy   ]]