Lily DeLony, fifteen, tells her very one-sided version of what happened on Christmas Eve night 1883 in the town of McDade, Texas, when a vigilante group made up of ordinary citizens struck against a gang of outlaws. One of the outlaw gang was the love of Lily's young life. One of the vigilantes was her father.
Based around a true event, Lily's telling of this tale is characterized by her spirit, her will, her fearlessness, and the endearing gullibility of youth. By the end of the story, Lily had forsaken all that for the love of Marion Beatty and an unknown future - one that includes a pistol in Lily's skirt pocket.
Lily DeLony, fifteen, tells her very one-sided version of what happened on Christmas Eve night 1883 in the town of McDade, Texas, when a vigilante group made up of ordinary citizens struck against a gang of outlaws. One of the outlaw gang was the love of Lily's young life. One of the vigilantes was her father.
Based around a true event, Lily's telling of this tale is characterized by her spirit, her will, her fearlessness, and the endearing gullibility of youth. By the end of the story, Lily had forsaken all that for the love of Marion Beatty and an unknown future - one that includes a pistol in Lily's skirt pocket.
Folks around here say the Beatty boys were just plain wild and no good, and that they made us all look bad here in McDade. Made the whole county look bad in the eyes of the rest of Texas. Like we were all wild and no good ourselves, to have grown up such bad boys, like that Beatty bunch.
Thatâs Beatty with the a sounding out. But not B-A-T-E-Y like it was spelled in that newspaper article that came out three weeks after Christmas. January 18, 1884. Most everything in that article was wrong, and I dwelled on it after I got back home. Just sitting out on the hollow log back of the barn by the running creek those first days back, dwelling on how that Beatty name got spelled wrong. It had been raining. Awful cold. Enough to make water come out my eyes and nearly freeze to my face.
The Beattys didnât have a mother. Daddy neither by the time I knew them. Old man Beatty had died a year or two before. Some say he poisoned himself with bootjack whiskey and Tuttâs pills. Liver disorder was how Marion explained it to me. But he never said much about his mama. What she went of. Birthing Marion is what Mrs. Kennedy told me. Plumb wore herself out having those last three boys right in a row like she did, one every year till Marion came. I sat on that hollow log by the creek for three days thinking about her, and about how it seemed like they didnât any of them ever exist. I guess I was the only sad one in the whole town.
My own daddy left me alone those three days. So did my two brothers and my sister. And then the morning of the fourth day, Papa came out to fetch me, saying, âThatâs all now, Lily. Thatâs all the grieving you got time for. Thereâs bread to bake and hogs to slop, and them little âuns canât tend to it all alone.â
You see, my own mama passed on in childbirth too, so I guess I know what itâs like to come up without your ma. Itâs hard work, and itâs lonely, and there ainât ever anybody there to tuck your covers and pat your head when youâre feeling poorly. And even though Iâm the oldest, fifteen now, and can take care of the others, I know a little bit how those Beatty boys felt. How come they turned out so wild and misbehaving.
Jack was the oldest, and so I donât remember him much as a little kid. Azberry neither, though he was just two years in front of Marion. The oldest boys were the two roughest, lowest talking. One time, I heard Az tell Mr. Westbrook down at the lumberyard to get off his lazy-ass butt and saw up a board for their wagon. He said it loud enough folks heard all the way down the street to Billingsleyâs store. Marion said Az just liked to show off for folks, prove he was a man himself and could say those dirty words. I never heard Marion cuss. Never once. But the rest sure could. Even Haywood, who only outdid Marion in age by ten months or so.
The four of them, I swear to you, were as different as sugar and salt. Az and Haywood had the dark hair. Az kept a kinky beard like coal dust on his cheeks. Those two were blue-eyed. Jackâs and Marionâs eyes were brown. But Marion had soft eyes, not small and cold, or set deep back in his head like Jackâs were. Jack had light hair, but he wore it so dirty it turned to the color of the ground inside a hog pen. Marionâs hair was red. Not red like the magnolia seed on the tree by our house. But red like the later end of sunset, spang through with streaks of gold and yellow, and darker shades underneath like heavy, low clouds hanging at the horizon.
When I noticed him again, after years of raising my brothers and my sister, and after growing into womanhoodâwhen I saw him again like it was the first time, standing in the dust and daylight there on the road outside Billingsleyâs store, it was that funny-colored hair of his I noticed, flecking at me like a length from a bolt of the best organdy in Bastrop.
He was standing beside his horse, his hat off, inspecting something inside the crown like a burr had caught up in a seam. He looked up, as if my eyes had stung him somehow, and when he saw me looking, a smile cracked out one corner of his mouth. He cupped his hat back onto his head, covered up that flashy hair, and gave the brim a tip in my direction.
âWell, hello there, Lily DeLony,â he said. âSure ainât seen you in a while.â
It kind of surprised me how he remembered my name. Last I could recall heâd been about twelve years old, stumbling over the words in Miss Huddletonâs reading books at the schoolhouse behind the city bank. He wasnât twelve anymore, but he had the same face. Same soft, shy eyes. The spit dried up inside my mouth.
âHello yourself,â I said, pulling Dellie with my free hand towards the spring buggy we used for hauling store goods. Nathan sat behind the mule, waiting on us, popping the leather whip at a ball of flies swirling under Mr. Billingsleyâs awning.
I stepped off the walk with my sister and my package of sugar, some nickel-plated sewing needles, a twist of tobacco for Papa. It wasnât heavy. I didnât feel a strain. But Marion ducked around the hitching rail and grabbed the package from my arm.
âLemme help you with this, Lily,â he said, even though we werenât but two steps from the buggy. He put the package inside the plunder box, then lifted Dellie under her arms and swung her up to the seat. âThis âun yours?â he said to me as she squealed out a giggle from being swung so high and fast. Her skirt ruffled out around her as she plopped onto the cowhide.
âSheâs my sister. I wasnât but eight when she was born, so I ainât old enough to be her mama. Sheâs seven now.â I put my foot on the booster and pushed my own self up to the seat. He didnât reach to help.
He slapped the bench beside Nathan. âHello, Bob- boo,â he said.
My brother sneered down the length of his nose. âMy nameâs Nathan.â
âHeâs nine,â I said.
Marion grinned wide. âToo young to be his ma too, I guess. It donât seem like folks would lose track of each other in such a dinky town, does it, Lily?â
âI hear tales about you and yours.â I smoothed at the uncaught hair beside my ears, peeved that the piece of twine wouldnât keep my pigtail in tow. Iâd been hoping for hairpins from Mr. Billingsley. He was still fresh out.
âCan we go now?â Nathan was ready to crack the mule on his rump.
âWhat tales?â Marion said, his grin nearly fading.
Somebody whistled from the door of the rock saloon, then catcalled, âWhoo-ee! Come take a look at what Shotâs found hisself.â After that came some more caterwauling.
I glanced and saw Azberry and a man named Charlie Goodman, and another one of Marionâs relations, Thad McLemore, who lived down in the bottom with his older brother and sister-in-law. They had a shack on a couple of acres of weeds. No means of livelihood that anybody in McDade could see. The McLemores hadnât been in town long. Only about two months or so. Rumor was Thad had left a wife and six kids somewheres over in Fayette County.
The three men standing at the saloon door leered at me. They looked half-drunk already, at just a little past high noon. All three of them wore gun belts strapped around their hips, leather thongs tying the holsters onto their thighs. We had a no-gun law in our town but wasnât anybody with nerve enough to force it on the Beattys.
Azberry cocked his fingers like they were a pair of six-shooters and fired them off in our direction. The two fellows standing beside him hawed with laughter.
I reached to tap Nathan to whip up the mule. Marion walked beside the buggy a few steps. His face had gone purple.
âDonât pay them no mind, Lily,â he said. It bothered me how he kept saying my name. It seemed impolite some way.
I looked back at him over my left shoulder. The buggy wheels were throwing grit on his britches, spatting like a hard rain at the buckskin vest he wore. The Beatty boys were all big for the buckskin. It made them look like gunmen, or outlaws. Which I guess, when you think about it, is what they were.
Well, they werenât ever big-time outlaws. Not like John Wesley Hardin or Sam Bass. The Beatty gang was small-time, McDade-size outlaws. At least back then they were. Mostly they just pestered Mr. Nash, who owned the rock saloon.
Theyâd get drunk and shoot up the walls or ride their horses in over the board gallery and through the summer doors. The saloon was built of fieldstone and couldnât hardly be hurt none. They left a few bullet holes in the mortar, hoof prints in the pine floor. They scuttled a few poker games, I expect. No real damage though. Mr. Nash didnât complain. The Beatty gang were his best customers.
Marion quit running alongside the buggy. âDonât judge me by them over there,â he shouted, waving towards Az and Charlie Goodman and Thad McLemore. When his arm moved out, I caught a glimpse of the blue steel end of a pistol inside his vest.
My shoulders raised in a shrug as Nathan drove us off towards the farm. How else was I supposed to know him? Or judge him, or whatever he meant? I wondered why he said that to me, and what matter it made to him what I thought. I was just a girl he used to know in school. Nothing else.
But those words of his kept coming to meâas Iâd be scrubbing Papaâs work shirts, or Daneâs, out back in the soak box; or as Iâd be feeding the chickens or gathering the eggs they laid under the porch. For days after that trip to town I thought about Marion and his hair, and about how heâd said for me not to judge him. And then me and Nathan got the garden ground started for the fall crop of vegetables, hoeing and planting seed, and watering in. Pretty soon, Marion Beatty slipped from my mind.
When Marion taps Lily on the shoulder, she ditches her current beau to spend an hour with him at the County Fair. She likes everything about him, his brown eyes and red hair. But she objects to the gun he carries and she tells him so.
Marion is one of the Beatty boys, rough outlaws who hold up stagecoaches and frequent the town saloon. Unlike his brothers, heâs patient and soft-spoken. Everyone tells her heâs bad: Widow Kennedy, her father, and her siblings but it makes no difference. Her heart has chosen him.
He can be reckless. He arranges to meet her in the graveyard to give her a present. Itâs the photograph of them from the Fair. He asks if he can court her. She tells him her father will never allow it. Rather than accept it, he throws her up onto his horse for a ride. Itâs the closest theyâve ever been. And true to the era, he still hasnât kissed her. He takes her to his family's homestead so that she knows where to find him.
When Mrs. Kennedy's choreboy Eppie is found dead and placed on the church's altar, the men of the town have had enough. On Christmas Eve night, Lily watches her father leave with the other farmers and their shotguns. When she comes to town the next day, she sees three men hanging from a tree. She knows she has to leave town before her sweetheart gets killed by her own father.
Marion is a better man than her father. He answers any question she puts to him. He's considerate with animals, children, and her. Heâs gentle with his horse, Mollie, making sure to never ride her too hard.
He knows how to fight, but only to defend himself. He admits to being a robber and a thief, but he refuses to kill. That's enough for Lily. They leave together in the dead of night and Lily learns how hard it will be to stand by her man.
Written in the untutored language of the era, the hardscrabble life of Texas and its people come magnificently alive. For fans who enjoy the Gunnie Rose series or historical novels like Girl of the Limberlost. I look forward to reading this book again and again.