SETH CAREY'S ESCAPE FROM THE MURDEROUS YOCUM GANG

[Salty Dog]

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.

[Salty Dog]

After a few weeks, Carey despaired of ever returning to Cedar Bayou, and decided to sell his property to Yocum, if an agreement could be reached. He would then escape to Louisiana, and Yocum readily agreed, offering to compensate the fugitive partly in gold, partly in slaves, and the remainder to be several heads of horses. But first, Yocum told him, he would have to see the Cedar Bayou property himself, and determine if the title were clear and transferable. Carey then executed a power-of-attorney so Page could transfer the property, and as the innkeeper prepared to ride westward, he warned the fugitive again to remain close to the attic and not show his face outside if strangers appeared at the Inn.

After Yocum left, Carey decided to walk through the woods to the stock pens where Higdon lived, and along the way he ran into W. H. Irion, whom Carey tended to trust because of their previous acquaintance. He told Irion the complete story of the Brittain killing, his agreement to sell Yocum his property and his plan to flee to Louisiana. Irion feigned great astonishment, but with a selfsame frankness, he told Carey that more than likely the latter would be murdered as soon as Yocum returned. Irion then recounted a few of the murder episodes that had transpired at the Inn, and readily admitted his own involvement in some of McClusky's and Yocum's machinations, which had ended short of murder.

[Salty Dog]

Carey asked Irion to ride hurriedly to Cedar Bayou with a letter for Benjamin Page in order to try to stop the transfer of Carey's property before it was too late. Irion replied that he couldn't because he had no money for the trip, but that Carey should not worry -- that Irion would not stand by and permit Yocum to kill him. Carey, however, pressed his desire, offering Irion his expensive pistol and gold watch to finance the trip, and the latter finally agreed. Carey then penned a brief note to Page, and Irion rode away with the gun, watch, and letter, exclaiming as he dug in his spurs, "I'll defeat old Yocum this time, damn 'im!"

[Salty Dog]

Instead, the scheming Irion rode straight to Yocum's house and gave the letter to the innkeeper's wife. Then he left for Beaumont to sell the watch and pistol and pocket the proceeds. As of that moment, Carey felt that he could no longer wager his life by spending another night in the attic of Yocum's Inn. While the innkeeper was away, he would slip out of the house each day after dark and spend his nights hidden away in the hayloft of the barn. The next Saturday, the same day that Yocum returned, Carey left at daylight for Zeke Higdon's cabin, only to learn that the stock-keeper and his wife planned to spend the day grinding corn at Yocum's mill. Carey later hid out in the woods near the trail, and as sunset approached, he saw the Higdons returning with a cartload of corn meal.

[Salty Dog]

As the fugitive pondered his plight, he considered for the first time the feasibility of returning to Harris County and face the legal music there rather than fleeing to Louisiana without any money. Beset with fright and unaware that Yocum had already returned, Carey began pleading for Higdon to help him in his flight, adding that he already knew a plot to murder him existed. At first Higdon scoffed at the idea, but later, as they approached the latter's cabin, Higdon grew strangely silent and appeared depressed. Later he asked Carey to remain outside while he and his wife discussed a matter of importance in the privacy of their home. While Carey waited, their muffled but upraised voices were sometimes audible through the log crevices, but always their subject of conversation remained a mystery. Finally Mrs. Higdon opened the door and invited Carey inside.

[Salty Dog]

At a glance he could tell that Higdon had been crying. For a second time, Carey inquired about the cause of Higdon's depression, but received no answer, the latter only turning and staring blankly at the wall. At last his wife intervened, "Come on out with it, Zeke! It's Carey's life that's at stake so tell him!"

Higdon commenced in a slow and unsteady voice, remarking first that Yocum was already back from Cedar Bayou with the title to Carey's property, but for payment the old robber planned to substitute murder for the gold, slaves, and horses he had originally promised.

[Salty Dog]

My life and yours are both at stake if I back down, Carey," he said, "but I ain't no Judas hunting thirty pieces of silver. Yocum made me promise to take you tomorrow morning to a swamp, about seven miles from here, under the pretense of hunting the mule you have running loose. He, his son Chris, and Bud McClusky will be waiting there. If I do not choose to see you murdered, I am to pretend to see a deer and ride away, while they kill you and throw you into the slough with the alligators. My payment for playing Judas is to be your mule, a gun worth about $100, and a good race horse."

Relieved that he had finally found some one he could trust, Carey proffered a solution that he thought might get Higdon temporarily off the hook. Unknown to either Yocum or Higdon, Carey's mule was in the nearby woods, hobbled and grazing, for he long foreseen the possible need for a quick getaway. And about four miles south of stock pens, there lived an old farmer, named E. C. Harris, who raised and cured tobacco, and Carey had already visited him on two occasions to buy the fuel for his habit.

[Salty Dog]

"Early in the morning," Carey suggested, "tell Yocum that I left before daylight to buy smokes at old Harris' place, but will be back by 10 o'clock, and we'll go looking for the mule then. He'll believe that 'cause he knows I'm a slave to tobacco. I'll leave my coat and knife at your place and that oughta convince him that I'll be back."

" Where are you going?" Higdon inquired.

"I guess back to Cedar Bayou and face up to the law. There's plenty witnesses for my defense and maybe I can get a fair trial."

[Salty Dog]

He then shook hands with Higdon and retreated to the woods to find his mule, fully-prepared to rise before daylight and follow the westbound sun toward Cedar Bayou. Along the way he planned to stop off at the residence of a certain Liberty County rancher and tell him where he could find his missing brother's mare with the stocking feet.

As directed, Higdon also rose early the next day, and he and his wife rode through the woods to Yocum's Inn. Old Yocum, his son Chris, and Bud McClusky, each of them heavily armed, stood by the rail fence of the corral as they talked. When Higdon drove up, Yocum demanded in an upraised voice, "Where's Carey, and when are you two heading for the thicket?"

"In two or three hours. Carey left early to go to old Harris' place for smokes, but he'll be back by ten."

"You didn't follow my order!" old Yocum retorted.

[Salty Dog]

"Don't fret over it!" Higdon replied, noting the old killer's piercing eyes and stern facial expression." Carey'll be back soon, and your plan will still carry through. Why, he even left his coat and knife at my place, and you know he wouldn't leave without those. Ask my wife if you don't believe me!"

Old Yocum then glanced at the young woman and seemed convinced after her affirmative nod. "Never mind!" he answered, "I'll change the plan, but you shore cheated yourself out of a fine mule, a gun, and a fast stallion."

He then turned to his son, Chris, and Bud McClusky and directed them to hide out along the trail south of the stock pens. When they sighted Carey, they were to shoot him immediately and haul the body away to the alligator slough. After Zeke and Tabitha Higdon returned to their cabin, they hastily loaded their sparse possessions on the mule cart and lit out toward the west, avoiding the south trail where the killers would be hidden.

[Salty Dog]

In the meantime, Carey arrived in Liberty County and told the rancher about the murder outpost on Pine Island Bayou, spicing his story in places with details about the alligator slough and the skeletons that lay scattered throughout the thickets. And as he rode on, the cattleman began rounding up a posse of friends, a band of vigilantes that eventually would reach 150 men in size. After arriving at the Page residence on Cedar Bayou, Carey surrendered to Judge Moreland, who bound him over, on a $500 bond signed by Page and Dr. Whiting, to the next session of the district court. And later, after a dozen witnesses appeared in his defense, he won a rather easy acquittal based on his justifiable homicide plea.

After the trial, he hurried back to Beaumont and having located Zeke Higdon, who accompanied him back as a witness, Carey appeared before Sheriff Robert West to state his complaint against Yocum and seek the return of his swindled property. But he soon learned that the infamous inn and its outbuildings had already been burned by the 150-man posse of Regulators, led by the Liberty County rancher.

[Salty Dog]

Forewarned in some manner, Yocum's gang of cutthroats had scattered in all directions, and his wife, children, and slaves had been driven from Jefferson County. Some days later, after the old murderer had been tracked to the cabin of a relative on Spring Creek in Montgomery County, the posse dispatched old Yocum to the lower regions with five bullets through the heart.

Bud McClusky escaped to the Neches River bottomlands, and when last reported, he was recognized as he rode across Calcasieu Parish, La., on horseback. And a few weeks later, Chris Yocum was found hanging one morning from an oak limb on the courthouse lawn in Beaumont. As an added token of affection, his vigilante executioners had driven a 10-penny nail into the base of his skull. While lynch justice was usually regrettable and always illegal, somehow it seemed a fitting end for the murderous villains who had brought so much grief to so many trusting patrons.

[Salty Dog]

Frontier intrigue and derring-do passed from Seth Carey's life after 1841. As he had promised old Page, Carey married the daughter on her sixteenth birthday, and later the couple reared a large family on Cedar Bayou. Except for a couple short periods of residence elsewhere, he spent his surviving years tending to his cattle herds and cotton fields on the bayou, and running his sawmill. Long a prosperous farmer, Seth Carey died, nearing his eightieth birthday, still delighted that Providence had seen fit to deliver him from the clutches of the infamous Yocum gang of assassins on Pine Island Bayou.