The Floor of Heaven Read Online Free PDF

remained hanging, but it was soon riddled with bullet holes. Charlie, though, was in no mind to complain. Truth was, it was as if the whole experience of hanging the damn sign had torn a hole through his very being big enough for someone to crawl through.
    TWO
    ike Charlie Siringo, Jefferson Smith was another cowboy who had come in off the range, only there had been nothing tentative or regretful in his decision. Jeff—or Soapy, as most people would later take to calling him—had spent two miserable years in the saddle; driving herds north from Texas up the Chisholm Trail had turned out to be relentless and irritating work. All the busy, dusty days under a baking sun and the dull, quiet nights in lonesome country had ground down what he quickly realized had simply been an ill-conceived, youthful notion. He found nothing to admire or value in the cowpuncher’s hard life.
    Soapy had been a good rider, though, always sitting well in the saddle, and he drew assignments near the front of the herd. That suited him fine; he’d give the cattle plenty of room to move at their own pace through the stretches of open country while he took to daydreaming. His imagination would drift to thoughts about a way of life that was a bit more leisurely, more suited to the whims of a genial, fun-loving man. His ambitions were vague, but he was certain there had to be an enterprise that held out the prospect of allowing him to make his fortune without the inconvenience of hard labor.
    At the end of the long day, sitting with his fellow hands in camp, a tin plate covered with a stew thick with brown beans for dinner, Soapy would boast that he was the son of a southern gentleman, a lawyer. That the family had hit on hard times after the war, moved from Georgia to Round Rock, a dry-as-hay Texas town, that his embittered father had given up the law for drink, and that his mother, a crusty, hot-tempered volcano, supported his brothers and sisters by running a down-at-the-heels hotel famous for the foul-mouthed parrot caged on the front porch, well, those were corners of the family history that Soapy never found reason to share. To hear him tell it—and with all the long nights in camp, the boys had plenty of occasions—he was by birth and breeding cut out for something better than cowboying. His self-esteem was unshakable. And he sure could talk. When Soapy got going, he had a rich way of stringing words together that brought to mind a preacher’s Sunday sermon. Yet despite all his eloquence and all his prideful genealogy, a lot of the crew felt there was something about Soapy that didn’t quite measure up. The unspoken truth, they soon came around to thinking, was that Soapy just didn’t have the backbone for the cowpuncher’s demanding life.
    But what people thought didn’t touch him much. Soapy kept his determination very close, a well-guarded armory of strength. He had his own plans. And so in the summer of 1879, one evening after the cattle had settled into a good bed-ground, Soapy bundled up his bedroll, tied it to his saddle, and took off. He was a strapping nineteen-year-old, cocky about his prospects and, in his breezy, philosophical way, unencumbered by any restraining scruples.
    He held no illusions. Soapy anticipated that in his pursuit of easy money he’d need to tread a bit lightly around some people’s conception of what was lawful. Not that he was setting out to be an outlaw; robbing banks or horse thieving was bold work and, more troublesome, could get a man hung. And gunplay, too, was something he wanted to avoid. Last year he had seen a vengeful posse shoot down Sam Bass, the notorious train robber, and the frightful scene—the desperado groaning for mercy, his gushing wounds spilling a river of wet, red blood into the sandy Texas street—still stuck in his mind. There had to be easier ways to strike it rich in the West. A quick-thinking, enterprising man, he felt, should be able to rely on the gifts God had given him to