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Seth
Carey's Escape
from the Murderous Yocum Gang
Page 4By
W. T. Block |
Page
3
Irion
came to Yocum's Inn once or twice each week, and Yocum assured the fugitive that
neither McClusky nor Irion would ever betray him. Carey wandered at first only
as far as the corral to tend his mule, but as time passed, he occasionally went
for short strolls in the nearby forest. Sometimes he chatted with some of Yocum's
slaves, one of whom was a 19-year-old Mulatto named Job, a stock-minder, whose
mother had been Yocum's cook since long before his birth.
Once, when Carey
heard cattle lowing, Job took him down a wooded trail to the stock pens, where
a number of steers had just been sold to a cattle drover and would soon begin
the long trek to New Orleans. There he met a red-haired stock-keeper, Ezekial
Higdon, who oversaw Yocum's large herd of cattle and horses and lived in a rude
cabin nearby with his wife. Higdon also enjoyed a wide reputation in the area
as a "broncobuster" and horse racer.
Yocum's two older sons were usually
gone and reputedly spent much of their time in Beaumont,
where one of them, Chris, lived with his young bride. Two smaller children often
played about the yard, but Yocum's wife was rarely seen outside of the house except
when she rode her elegant carriage to Beaumont. A couple of men, "Boozer" and
"Wes," were introduced to Carey as being among Yocum's most trusted employees,
but no surnames were mentioned, a rather common occurrence on a frontier where
outlaws abounded.
The
more sinister aspects of Yocum's
Inn, however, were transmitted to Carey by the young slave, after the former
had gained Job's confidence. Nearly all of the tales, among them Yocum's earlier
association with the notorious John A. Murrell gang of robbers along the Natchez
Trace and Yocum's horse and slave-stealing escapades in the Neutral Strip, had
been passed along to Job by his mother.
A few decades earlier, before
Yocum had fled from law enforcement in Mississippi, it was said that an aged veteran
of the American Revolution had lived with him, having deeded to Yocum all of his
bounty lands in exchange for care, board, and lodging until his death. The old
soldier imbibed quite freely, however, and often "slept off the fumes" on a pallet
in front of the fire place. One day when the old man was drunk and Yocum was molding
musket balls from molten lead, the innkeeper stuck a small funnel into the old
man's ear and filled his head with boiling lead, which brought on instantaneous
death.
Other tales recounted by the young slave mentioned the thoroughbred
horses in Yocum's stable, whose owners, usually cattlemen returning from New Orleans
with fat money belts, had ridden them to the Inn in search of food and a night's
lodging. The next day, the horses were seen running loose in the corral or pasture,
but the owners were never seen again. And a gray mare with two white stocking
feet, which Carey had seen in the stock pens, certainly answered the description
of a missing Liberty County cattleman. On one occasion, Job said that he had seen
two huge alligators in Yocum's slough devouring the body of a man, and elsewhere,
the bones of other victims were reported as scattered about the nearby thickets.
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