Lyrical Badman

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30633, 26 December 1964, Page 5

Lyrical Badman

[Specially written for “The Press” by DERRICK ROONEY]

I dreamt a dream! What can it meant And that I was a maiden queen Guarded by an angel mild-. Witless woe was ne’er beguil’d! —Wm. Blake, “Songs of Experience.”

It’s unlikely Rufus Buck, outlaw, ever read the visionary poetry of William Blake. But there is evidence that he had a certain affinity with it —or rather, evidence that Buck lived a thoroughly bad life and, while waiting for his final appointment, came to somewhat similar conclusions as Blake.

Rufus Buck is one of the few American badmen about whom practically nothing favourable can be said. He was the leader of the Buck gang, the terror of the Southwest, which got off to a snappy start on July 28, 1895, the day they shot to death a deputy marshall just for looking suspiciously at them. In the next 13 days the quintet —from left, above: Maomi July. Sam Sampson, Rufus Buck, Luckey Davis, Lewis Davis—left a trail of rape and murder in the Indian Territory.

Then their luck ran out, for they encountered none other than Judge Isaac C. Parker, the famous “Hanging Judge.” Since 1875 Judge Parker had been “sternly exterminating” murderers. A fanatically religious man, the Judge had a horror of murder —and sometimes showed his disapproval by stringing up tw’o or three killers a day. , Buck's trial was merely a formality. The prosecutor did not bother to sum up, and William M. Cravens, one of the five State-appointed defence counsel, entered one of the shortest defences on record: “May it please the Court and the gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the evidence. I have nothing to say.” The jury filed out and in again, without bothering to sit down to ballot. The verdict was guilty and the prisoners were sentenced to be hanged. This is where the songs of experience enter the picture. After the bodies had been cut down, gaol officials found in Buck’s cell this verse, dedicated presumably to the women in the Buck family:

I dreamt I was in Heaven Among the Angels fair; I’d ne’er seen none so handsome That twine tn golden hair. They looked so neat and sang so sweet

And played the Golden Harp. I was about to pick an angel out And take her to my heart: But the moment I began to plea, I thought of you my love. There was none I’d seen so beautiful On earth, or Heaven above. Good-bye my dear wife and mother Also my sister. Yours truly, RUFUS BUCK.