And still things got worse. A cousin of ours, Simp Dixon, came down from Navarro County with a terrible tale to tell. Simp was son of Silas, who was brother to Johnny’s momma. His story poured coal oil on the hate we all felt for every Yankee in the world. What happened was, a bunch of Yank soldiers had rode up to the Dixon farm one day while Simp was way off in the woods hunting and his pa was in town getting supplies. The blues killed everybody—Simp’s momma and his baby brother and both his sisters, one twelve and one fourteen. Nobody knew why they’d done it. They mighta been drunk, but not necessarily. Simp said his ma had a sharp tongue and hated Yankees worse than the blackest sin, so likely she said things that set them off. They burned down the barn and shot their old milk cow and stole all four horses in the corral. They blew his little brother’s head off and took his ma and sisters into the house and violated them in the most dishonorable way before shooting them dead too. When Simp’s pa got back and found his neighbors gathered round the bodies of his family laid out in the front room of the house, he near lost his mind with grief. They told Simp later that his pa had cried and cried and started to drinking, and by nightfall he was in a drunken, sorrowing rage. He picked up the body of his youngest daughter, who’d always been his favorite, and let out a howl you could of heard clear to the Brazos. When his pa grabbed up his rifle and pouch of ammunition and rode off hell-for-leather toward the Yankee camp, Simp said, nobody would of been able to stop him if they tried. Late the next day, the county sheriff brought him back in a flatwagon, just as dead as a man can be from eighteen Yankee bullets.
Simp had got back home by then and helped to dig all the graves. That evening, he sold the house and property to a neighbor for twenty dollars cash money and the promise of eighty more someday when the neighbor had it. Then he saddled up and rode off to a place where the road between Corsicana and the Yankee camp curved through a thick grove of oak. He set himself up in a clump of trees and waited with his Sharps carbine loaded and cocked.
The next day three Yanks came riding down from Corsicana, laughing and half drunk. Simp shot one soldier in the head and then another in the spine as he tried to ride off. The third one hightailed it around the bend before Simp could load and cock the Sharps again. The one shot in the spine was still alive, but he was paralyzed and crying, and he begged Simp for his life. He had a sweetheart back home in Ohio he was fixing to marry, he said. Simp laughed at him while he scalped the other Yankee. He said the wounded Yank’s eyes about popped out of his head when he saw him do that. But we really should of seen his face, Simp said, when he did the same thing to him. The fella’s screams, Simp said, was music to his ears. He let the Yank have a good close look at his own bloody hair in his hand, then blasted his brains into the dirt. “It was about the most enjoyable fifteen minutes of my life,” Simp said, and the way he smiled when he said it, you didn’t doubt him a bit. But now the Yankees were on the hunt for him, and the word was out that they meant to shoot him on sight. He had the scalps hung on his saddle horn and he allowed me and Johnny to feel of them. The skin part was stiff and rough and left flakes of dry blood on your fingers.
Simp wasn’t but sixteen years old at the time, about three years older than me and Johnny. He had a smile like a wolf and his eyes were hot and bright as fire. He was the first wanted man we’d known, and we thought he was nothing but a hero for what he’d done. Still, there were times when he’d be off sitting by himself and looking like he might cry, and you knew he was thinking about his family and what those murdering Yankee bastards had done to them.
Simp’s wasn’t the only story of its kind that came to us. We heard tale after tale of Yankee cruelty all over Texas. The way they carried on in Texas after the War was pure hateful, and it’s something none of us will ever forget. They shot more than one man dead just for still wearing a Confederate cap. They’d throw you in jail for just staring hard at a Yankee. They stole any damn thing they wanted—stock, wagons, goods. They burned farms for the pure meanness of it—hell, they burned down whole towns. A bunch of drunk nigger soldiers burned Brenham to the ground and wasn’t a one of them arrested for it, and that’s a fact. It was clear enough those Yankee sons of bitches wouldn’t be satisfied till there wasn’t nothing left of Texas but burnt dirt. It ain’t a bit of wonder that for so many years after the War Texas was full of more bad actors than you could shake a hanging rope at. The way a lot of young fellas saw it, if the Yankees were the ones to make the laws, then the only proper thing to be was an outlaw.
Johnny and me used to spend a lot of time at our Uncle Barnett Hardin’s farm, and we sometimes helped to harvest his crop of sugarcane. That’s where the thing with Mage happened. At harvest time Uncle Barnett always hired extra hands to cut the stalks and that year Mage was one of them. He was a huge muscular man with hard yellow eyes—and about the best cane cutter in the county. He was said to have a temper as ugly as his face—which was just covered with warts—and he was given to bullying the other niggers something fierce. They said he’d killed a man in the Big Thicket by drowning him in a bayou. He’d been one of Judge Holshousen’s slaves before the War, and the judge will tell you he was trouble even then. After the War, the judge wouldn’t have him on the place as a hired man.
Anyhow, one afternoon me and Johnny were working in the same cane row as Mage and I got to wondering if the two of us could best him in rassling. He had a reputation as a rough rassler, and I knew he could take either of us by ourself, but I reckoned we could best him if he fought us two at once. So I put the challenge to him. He gave a mean laugh and tried to stare us down, but we just hard-eyed him right back. “Sure,” he finally said. “Some rassling be just fine.” The other hands got all excited and started making bets as they followed us down to the clearing at the end of the row.
He was stronger but we were smarter, and we worked him like a pair of dogs on a wild hog, one in front and one in back, yelling and distracting him every which way, then moving in fast and tripping him down, me grabbing one of his arms and Johnny the other and pinning him for fair. It happened so fast the other niggers couldn’t help laughing at Mage and riding him about it. He was so steamed his eyes looked like yellow fires. He naturally wanted to go another one, which was fine with us. And we took him down again. But before we could pin him he butted me in the face and broke my nose. I rolled away from him with blood running off my chin. Him and Johnny pulled apart and jumped to their feet. Johnny was smoking mad and told him there wasn’t any need of that, but Mage just spat and said did we want to rassle or did we want to cry about a bloody nose. Johnny asked me if I could go another and I nodded yes, although my eyes were watering so bad I couldn’t hardly see. So we locked up again—and Johnny dug his fingernails into Mage’s face and clawed open a bunch of his warts. Mage yowled and tore free of us and wiped his hand across his face and stared at the blood on his fingers. “You white shit son of a bitch!” he hollered—and grabbed Johnny by the hair and got him in a headlock and probably would of broke his neck if me and three big field hands hadn’t ganged up on him and pulled him off. “I’ll kill you!” he yelled. “I’ll cut your damn head off with my cane knife! I’ll kill you!”
Well, Johnny didn’t have a reason in the world to think he didn’t mean it, so he lit out for the house, me right on his heels. I knew he was going for his pistol, the big Dragoon his daddy had give him for his last birthday. He always brought it with him from home, even though his momma was always telling him not to.