TO the south of where the road between Leesville and Hardy, in the State
of Missouri, crosses the east fork of May Creek stands an abandoned
house. Nobody has lived in it since the summer of 1879, and it is fast
going to pieces. For some three years before the date mentioned above,
it was occupied by the family of Charles May, from one of whose ancestors
the creek near which it stands took its name.
Mr. May’s family consisted of a wife, an adult son and two young girls.
The son’s name was John—the names of the daughters are unknown to the
writer of this sketch.
John May was of a morose and surly disposition, not easily moved to
anger, but having an uncommon gift of sullen, implacable hate. His
father was quite otherwise; of a sunny, jovial disposition, but with a
quick temper like a sudden flame kindled in a wisp of straw, which
consumes it in a flash and is no more. He cherished no resentments, and
his anger gone, was quick to make overtures for reconciliation. He had a
brother living near by who was unlike him in respect of all this, and it
was a current witticism in the neighborhood that John had inherited his
disposition from his uncle.
One day a misunderstanding arose between father and son, harsh words
ensued, and the father struck the son full in the face with his fist.
John quietly wiped away the blood that followed the blow, fixed his eyes
upon the already penitent offender and said with cold composure, “You
will die for that.”
The words were overheard by two brothers named Jackson, who were
approaching the men at the moment; but seeing them engaged in a quarrel
they retired, apparently unobserved. Charles May afterward related the
unfortunate occurrence to his wife and explained that he had apologized
to the son for the hasty blow, but without avail; the young man not only
rejected his overtures, but refused to withdraw his terrible threat.
Nevertheless, there was no open rupture of relations: John continued
living with the family, and things went on very much as before.
One Sunday morning in June, 1879, about two weeks after what has been
related, May senior left the house immediately after breakfast, taking a
spade. He said he was going to make an excavation at a certain spring in
a wood about a mile away, so that the cattle could obtain water. John
remained in the house for some hours, variously occupied in shaving
himself, writing letters and reading a newspaper. His manner was very
nearly what it usually was; perhaps he was a trifle more sullen and
surly.
At two o’clock he left the house. At five, he returned. For some reason
not connected with any interest in his movements, and which is not now
recalled, the time of his departure and that of his return were noted by
his mother and sisters, as was attested at his trial for murder. It was
observed that his clothing was wet in spots, as if (so the prosecution
afterward pointed out) he had been removing blood-stains from it. His
manner was strange, his look wild. He complained of illness, and going
to his room took to his bed.
May senior did not return. Later that evening the nearest neighbors were
aroused, and during that night and the following day a search was
prosecuted through the wood where the spring was. It resulted in little
but the discovery of both men’s footprints in the clay about the spring.
John May in the meantime had grown rapidly worse with what the local
physician called brain fever, and in his delirium raved of murder, but
did not say whom he conceived to have been murdered, nor whom he imagined
to have done the deed. But his threat was recalled by the brothers
Jackson and he was arrested on suspicion and a deputy sheriff put in
charge of him at his home. Public opinion ran strongly against him and
but for his illness he would probably have been hanged by a mob. As it
was, a meeting of the neighbors was held on Tuesday and a committee
appointed to watch the case and take such action at any time as
circumstances might seem to warrant.
On Wednesday all was changed. From the town of Nolan, eight miles away,
came a story which put a quite different light on the matter. Nolan
consisted of a school house, a blacksmith’s shop, a “store” and a
half-dozen dwellings. The store was kept by one Henry Odell, a cousin of
the elder May. On the afternoon of the Sunday of May’s disappearance Mr.
Odell and four of his neighbors, men of credibility, were sitting in the
store smoking and talking. It was a warm day; and both the front and the
back door were open. At about three o’clock Charles May, who was well
known to three of them, entered at the front door and passed out at the
rear. He was without hat or coat. He did not look at them, nor return
their greeting, a circumstance which did not surprise, for he was
evidently seriously hurt. Above the left eyebrow was a wound—a deep gash
from which the blood flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and
neck and saturating his light-gray shirt. Oddly enough, the thought
uppermost in the minds of all was that he had been fighting and was going
to the brook directly at the back of the store, to wash himself.
Perhaps there was a feeling of delicacy—a backwoods etiquette which
restrained them from following him to offer assistance; the court
records, from which, mainly, this narrative is drawn, are silent as to
anything but the fact. They waited for him to return, but he did not
return.
Bordering the brook behind the store is a forest extending for six miles
back to the Medicine Lodge Hills. As soon as it became known in the
neighborhood of the missing man’s dwelling that he had been seen in Nolan
there was a marked alteration in public sentiment and feeling. The
vigilance committee went out of existence without the formality of a
resolution. Search along the wooded bottom lands of May Creek was
stopped and nearly the entire male population of the region took to
beating the bush about Nolan and in the Medicine Lodge Hills. But of the
missing man no trace was found.
One of the strangest circumstances of this strange case is the formal
indictment and trial of a man for murder of one whose body no human being
professed to have seen—one not known to be dead. We are all more or less
familiar with the vagaries and eccentricities of frontier law, but this
instance, it is thought, is unique. However that may be, it is of record
that on recovering from his illness John May was indicted for the murder
of his missing father. Counsel for the defense appears not to have
demurred and the case was tried on its merits. The prosecution was
spiritless and perfunctory; the defense easily established—with regard to
the deceased—an _alibi_. If during the time in which John May must have
killed Charles May, if he killed him at all, Charles May was miles away
from where John May must have been, it is plain that the deceased must
have come to his death at the hands of someone else.
John May was acquitted, immediately left the country, and has never been
heard of from that day. Shortly afterward his mother and sisters removed
to St. Louis. The farm having passed into the possession of a man who
owns the land adjoining, and has a dwelling of his own, the May house has
ever since been vacant, and has the somber reputation of being haunted.
One day after the May family had left the country, some boys, playing in
the woods along May Creek, found concealed under a mass of dead leaves,
but partly exposed by the rooting of hogs, a spade, nearly new and
bright, except for a spot on one edge, which was rusted and stained with
blood. The implement had the initials C. M. cut into the handle.
This discovery renewed, in some degree, the public excitement of a few
months before. The earth near the spot where the spade was found was
carefully examined, and the result was the finding of the dead body of a
man. It had been buried under two or three feet of soil and the spot
covered with a layer of dead leaves and twigs. There was but little
decomposition, a fact attributed to some preservative property in the
mineral-bearing soil.
Above the left eyebrow was a wound—a deep gash from which blood had
flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and neck and saturating
the light-gray shirt. The skull had been cut through by the blow. The
body was that of Charles May.
But what was it that passed through Mr. Odell’s store at Nolan?
“MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES”