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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. Page
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