Chapter XXXI: The Trans-cedar Mystery

THE LYNCHING OF THE HUMPHREYS AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LYNCHERS

Captain McDonald was still at Columbus when he received a telegram ordering him to report at once to Assistant Attorney General Morris and the local officials at Athens, Henderson County, Texas, for the purpose of investigating the lynching of three respectable citizens--a father and two sons, named Humphrey--in a timbered tract between Trinity River and Cedar Creek, known as the Trans-cedar Bottoms.

Henderson County is in East Texas, and the Trans-cedar Bottoms constitute just the locality and neighborhood for a murder of the Humphrey kind. Shut-in, thickly timbered and lonely--it is a place for low morals to become lower with each generation--for scant intellect to become scantier--for darkened minds to become darker and more impervious to pity, indeed to any human impulse except crime.

The Humphreys had not fitted an environment like that. They were honest, sturdy men--fearless and open in their dealings. They were a menace to a gang who made moonshine whisky, stole whatever they could lay hands on and would swear a man's life away for a lean hog. It was necessary for the welfare of the neighborhood that the Humphreys be disposed of, and they were taken by a mob one night and hanged--three of them to one tree--they having been placed upon horses and the horses driven from under them. Then, when the ropes had proven too long, and the feet of the three Humphreys had touched the ground, the mob had bent back the legs of the victims at the knee and tied the feet upward to the hands, so that the Humphreys might swing clear.

Bill McDonald knew something of the Trans-cedar country, and the character of its settlement, for, as we have seen in a former chapter, he had passed his youth and his early manhood at Henderson and at Mineola, both within seventy-five miles of that very district. He set out alone by first train, and arriving at Athens, learned the details of the ghastly crime which already, through the telegraphed reports, had stirred the entire State. He learned that the lynching had taken place about twenty-five miles from Athens, near a little post-office named Aley, and he hurried to that place, without delay, taking with him one Guy Green, an Athens lawyer, familiar with the neighborhood. With Green, the Ranger went straight to the scene of the murder and made an examination of the tracks and various clues that remained. Two days had passed since the crime, and many of the signs had been obliterated. Still there were enough for a man with the faculties of Captain Bill. He identified no less than four trails--one, as he decided, made by five horses; another by three; a third by two, and a fourth the track of a single horse. The trails wound in and out, crossed and recrossed, and were evidently made with the idea of balking pursuit. Captain McDonald did not consider them especially difficult, and having satisfied himself that they could be followed, he went on to Aley, for it was near nightfall.

At Aley he joined Assistant Attorney General Ned Morris; District Attorney Jerry Crook; Tom Bell, sheriff of Bell County, and Ben. E. Cabell, sheriff of Dallas County, who had come over to aid the investigation. He was assured that the work was going to be hard--that the greater portion of the inhabitants were either in sympathy with the lynchers or were so much in terror of them that it would be almost impossible to get direct evidence. Captain Bill looked thoughtful as he listened.

"Well," he said, "I'm going to stay here till I get it, and I'm going after it just like I was going for a doctor. You can give it out that I mean business and that nobody need to be afraid to testify. I'll take care of them."

He discussed the case with the officials and learned that one Joe Wilkerson was suspected as having been connected with the murder--it being well-known that Wilkerson had pursued the Humphreys and bemeaned them; finally accusing them of stealing hogs, and swearing to some meat which the Humphreys had earned by digging wells. In the evidence it had developed that the Wilkerson hogs, though mortgaged by him, had in reality been sold, and that he had thus attempted to evade the consequences of this illegal act by saddling the Humphreys with a still heavier crime. The Humphreys had not been convicted, but Wilkerson had never ceased to vilify them. Later, one of the Humphrey boys, George, had been set upon by some of the Wilkerson crowd and in defending himself had killed, with a knife, one of his assailants. The courts--there were honest courts in Athens--had cleared him, but in the Trans-cedar tribunal he had been doomed. These facts constituted about all the foundation of known motive upon which McDonald would have to build his evidence. It was while he was discussing these things with the attorneys on the night of his arrival that a man rode up to the gate just outside and called his name. Captain Bill rose, but the others protested, declaring that it might be a plot to shoot him in the dark. However, he went, six-shooter in hand, and sticking it in the face of the caller, demanded his business. The man protested that he meant no harm, but had come from one Buck Holley, who lived two miles down the road and said he knew Captain McDonald and wanted to see him. The Ranger Captain reflected a minute.

"I don't know any Buck Holley," he said. "I knew a scoundrel by the name of Bill Holley some years ago up in the Pan-handle, and if that is who it is I don't want to see him. I judge you fellows have got a gang down the road there to shoot me from ambush. Who are you, anyway?"

The man said his name was Monasco; that he was staying at Holley's and that he had a brother named Bill Monasco, in Amarillo.

"I know Bill Monasco," McDonald said, "and he has a brother that was sent to the penitentiary. Is that you?"

The visitor acknowledged that he was the man--that he had been recently released.

"Well," said McDonald, "that's about the kind of a crowd that I would expect to find Bill Holley running with, and you can tell this _Buck_ Holley, as you call him, that I suspect him of being connected with this mob, and that I used to make him stand hitched in the Pan-handle, and that I'm going to do the same here."

Monasco said "good-night," and Captain McDonald never saw him again. Somewhat later, when he met Bill Holley on the streets of Athens, he said:

"Look here, Bill, I'm afraid your partner, Monasco, didn't tell you the message I sent the night I came. I said I didn't know Buck Holley, but that I knew a sorry bulldozing scoundrel by the name of Bill Holley, and that I supposed he was down the road there to take a shot at me from ambush. You weren't in this lynching mob, I reckon, but they're your friends, and you'd help 'em if you could. Now, Bill, you've been courting a funeral a good while, and if you try any of your nonsense here, you'll win out."

He searched Holley for weapons and relieved him of a big pocket-knife, the bully protesting that he was no longer a bad man. Captain Bill learned, however, that he had recently whipped his wife, taken her clothes and driven her away from home, and later had attempted to kill her father for interfering in her behalf.

The Ranger Captain was out early the morning after his arrival in Aley, and on the trail. The tracks of the five horses were followed to the houses of Joe Wilkerson and his tenant, and to the homes of John and Arthur Greenhaw. In Wilkerson's lot the officers found part of a well-rope, the remainder of which had been cut away. It matched precisely with the rope used to hang the Humphreys--the freshly cut ends being the same on both. The Wilkersons and one of the Greenhaws were taken into custody forthwith, and other arrests followed, as the criminals were tracked home.

But it was hard to get evidence. A few who were anxious to testify, hesitated through fear. Others, subpœnaed and examined, were evidently in sympathy with the mob and withheld their knowledge accordingly. Captain Bill had been reinforced by Private Olds from Company C, and now began systematic investigation. He established his court of inquiry under a brush arbor--a framework of poles, with brush a-top to keep out the sun--and there for two months held high inquisition. It was a curious, exclusive court. The Ranger Captain gave it out that he would invite such attendance as he needed, and that mere spectators would kindly remain away. His wishes were heeded.

Little by little evidence collected. Men willing to testify gained confidence from Captain Bill's assurance of protection and told what they knew. Men unwilling to testify found themselves unable to hide their facts where they could not be reached by the keen persuasive probing of the man with those ferret eyes, that quiet voice and those alert extended ears. The testimony brought out the facts the Humphreys had known of an illicit still run by two men--one Polk Weeks and a man named Johns. Also that they had known of John Greenhaw stealing cattle and hogs, and that John Greenhaw had once drawn a gun on the elder Humphrey, who had taken it away from him, unloaded and returned it, instead of killing him with it and rendering the community a service. These things, added to the other provocations already named, had made the Humphreys sufficiently unpopular in a neighborhood like the Trans-cedar Bottoms to warrant their being hung to a limb, trussed up to swing clear of the ground.

In the course of time, practically every resident of that district had been before the brush-arbor court of inquiry, and if a shorthand report had been taken of that testimony it would have furnished material for many a character study and tale of fiction.

Guilty knowledge of the crime actually killed a man named Eli Sparks, whose conscience tortured him day and night to the point of giving testimony, yet whose fears upon the witness stand caused him to withhold the truth. He was a large red-faced man, evidently greatly excited when questioned, and concealing more than he told. Soon after his first examination he met Captain McDonald and offered to testify again, saying that he had been too frightened to tell the truth, the first time, but thought he could do better, now. The Ranger Captain scrutinized him keenly and made the prophecy that Eli Sparks would not live thirty days, unless he got rid of the load on his conscience. He died in just half that time; not, however, until he had fully confessed a complete knowledge of the details of preparation for the crime, and how once he had gone with the mob when they had intended hanging the Humphreys, but for some reason had postponed the event. The poor wretch did not go the second time, but his guilt nevertheless dragged him to the grave.

Another who came to the brush-arbor inquiry was a banker who testified that the Humphreys had received their just deserts for the reason that they were thieves and should have been hung long before.

"How did _you_ come to escape, then?" asked McDonald. "I understand that you were once indicted for cattle-stealing yourself, and that you actually got the cattle. Is that so?"

Under severe pressure the witness admitted that there had been such a charge and that the cattle had by some means got into his possession. He got away at last and disappeared out of the case entirely, though he had been active up to that point.

The efforts of the men believed to be concerned as principals in the crime, to establish their innocence, were sometimes wary, sometimes crudely absurd, and always fruitless. The mesh of fact that was weaving and linking itself about them became daily more tightly woven, more impossible to tear away. Knowing themselves closely watched, they dared not attempt flight. To do so would be to confess guilt, and capture would be well-nigh certain. Like Ahab, having compassed the death of a neighbor, they "lay in sackcloth and went softly." Finally it came to pass that three of these "children of Belial" turned State's evidence--that is, they confessed fully, sacrificing their comrades, under the law, to save themselves. Eleven men, including these three, were brought to trial.

Yet, conviction was not easy, in spite of the direct character of the evidence. The accused men employed lawyers who were ready to balk at no methods that would save their clients, and there were plenty of witnesses willing to testify as instructed. Efforts were also made to influence and coerce the State's witnesses, and McDonald found it necessary to threaten certain counsel for the defense with subornation proceedings, before he could get the way clear for action. Even then it was thought advisable to transfer the cases to Palestine, in the adjoining county, for trial--sentiment in the neighborhood of Athens being regarded as too favorable to the accused. In the final trial John and Arthur Greenhaw and Polk Weeks, who were not only murderers, but cowardly traitors, were given their freedom in exchange for their evidence that sent their eight associates to the Penitentiary for life.

Polk Weeks, in giving his evidence, appeared much disturbed, but confessed how he had climbed the tree and tied the ropes, and tied them too long, making it necessary for the legs of the Humphreys to be bent upwards, to clear the ground. John Greenhaw corroborated this, but grinned as he told it, remembering how amusing it had been. He did not live to enjoy his freedom, for he was shot soon after his discharge by a son of one of the murdered Humphreys--young Willie Humphrey, who was never punished for that righteous act.[11]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: Extract from a letter relating to the Humphrey case, written by Assistant Attorney General N.B. Morris to Adjutant-General Thos. Scurry; included in the latter's Annual Report for 1899-1900.

"You will remember that at the request of the sheriff, county attorney, and other local authorities of that county, Captain McDonald and Private Old were sent to assist them and myself in the investigation of that horrible murder which was then enshrouded in a mystery that it seemed almost impossible to uncover. Before the Rangers reached us the people in the neighborhood seemed afraid to talk. They said they would be murdered, too, if they took a hand in working up the case. About the first thing that Captain McDonald did was to assure the people that he and his associates had come to stay until every murderer was arrested and convicted, and that those who assisted him would be protected. They believed him, and in consequence thereof, soon began to talk and feel that the law would be vindicated, and I am glad to say that it was. The work of the Rangers in this one case is worth more to the State, in my opinion, than your department will cost during your administration. In fact such service cannot be valued in dollars and cents."[12]]

[Footnote 12: For further official details of this and other work of that period, see Appendix B.]