Pa and I sat in front of the fire, and he put his Bible aside and rubbed his eyes. Then he said, "It was the worst murder that ever happened in Boone County, and some folks will forever grieve her death. It happened in 1912, five years before we started sending men to France to die for nothing. In those days, Stella Barnes was the talk of the town. She had suitors from all around the Ozarks: Yellville, Alpena, Harrison, Jasper, even a couple boys from Eureka Springs. Rumor has it that her folks kept a shoe box full of love letters from fellas who wanted to marry her."
I asked, "Was she that pretty?"
"She was beautiful, but she was also strong and smart and fun to be with. Stella had a way of laughing when a fella told a joke or poking fun when he got too big for his britches. And she was a good girl, too; she went to church and sang in the choir. Her ma, Dee, said she made the best apple pie for the pie suppers, and the fellas would bid a week's wages for it, mainly because the winner got to eat the pie with her. She would hold a feller's hand and maybe let him give her a peck on the cheek, but that was all. She was happy. Carefree. Everybody loved Stella.
"On the morning of October 31, Stella told her ma she was going to ride the creek trail to see her cousin, Sally Dunnam. She put on her favorite dress and saddled up her pony and started off by Twisted Creek. When she got to her cousin's house, Sally said she was on her way out, but the two girls visited awhile. It was getting on to lunch time, but Stella told her Aunt Mary she would wait until she got home to eat. That's how we know about what time Stella started on her way home.
"One thing I forgot to mention is that Stella Barnes had passed the Davis house on the way to her cousin's. Otto Davis was on the front porch sharpening an axe, and his brother Lyle was sitting on the steps whittling. She bade them, 'Good morning,' and the boys said, Howdy, and that was all.
"When the afternoon wore on and Stella hadn't come home, her ma felt in her bones something bad had happened. The ride to her sister's house didn't take but about a half hour on horseback, and it wasn't like Stella to be gone all day. So, Dee told her husband—his name was Lloyd—to go look for her. He saddled up his horse and started toward the trail when he saw Hank Sherman riding back from town, and Lloyd told him that Stella hadn't come home and would he mind helping look for her? Of course, Hank said he would, but he said, 'Let me gather up a few others." Pretty soon a party of six or seven men were walking up and down Twisted Creek and along the bluffs. Then Hank yelled, 'I found her! But Lloyd, you better not come. Stay where you are.' When the other men rode up, Hank was bent over with his hands on his knees and puking in the creek. The men soon enough saw why. Somebody had killed Stella with an axe and—" Here Pa cleared his throat and said, "It was godawful, too godawful to talk about. One of the men said, 'I'll go get the sheriff,' and the others dismounted and sat on a rock and waited.
"You can imagine how Lloyd and Dee took it. They were crazy with grief. It's hard enough to lose a child, God knows, but to have something like that happen. It's too much. And the town was in a rage looking for the killer. Everybody thought it would be some hobo passing through or somebody else from off, but when the deputy sheriff found an axe with blood on the handle at the Davis house, the people turned their suspicions to Otto and Lyle. After all, the boys knew where she was going and that she would be coming back on the same trail. It was told about that Otto had made a play for Stella, and she had turned him down. Then when they searched Otto's room, they found a pair of damp socks with red pepper in them, and that sealed the boy's fate."
I asked, "Why would he have red pepper in his socks?"
"Because red pepper throws off blood hounds. Something about the smell. The sheriff asked Otto why he had pepper in his socks, and he just shrugged and said, 'I dunno.' That by itself was enough to convince the sheriff and the people hereabouts think he did it.
"When the report came back from Little Rock that the blood on the axe handle was human, Otto was charged with killing Stella, and Lyle was accused of being an accessory. The jury convicted the boys, and in March of 1913, Otto was hanged in Harrison and Lyle sent to the penitentiary." Pa took a deep breath and sighed. "But that's not the whole story."
"What happened?"
"Otto had been tight-lipped during the trial. He said hardly a word even when he was on the stand. But after he was convicted, a reporter from the Harrison Gazette got an interview with him, and Otto told him, 'I swear I didn't never touched Stella. I loved her. With all my heart, I loved her. It's true, I did hide in the trees and wait for her to come back. And I had the axe. I had been chopping wood, and I carried it with me into the woods—I don't know why, but I did. I was hiding because I wanted to talk to her. I thought if she knew how much I loved her, she would love me back. When I saw her cross the creek, I come out of the woods, but I was stopped by a, I don't know what it was, it looked like a big ball of fire. It was orange-red and stood between me and her. Then she let out a terrible scream, and the fireball was on Stella's shoulders. It was coming down on her, and she was trying to push it off. Then God as my witness, I saw . . . him.'
"The reporter asked, 'Who? Who did you see?'
'Yore gonna think I'm crazy if I say.' '
'No, I'm not. Who did you see?'
In a whisper, 'I saw Satan.'
'You saw Satan?'
'Yes, sir, but not like in a Sunday School picture book.'
'What did he look like?'
'He was tall and fine featured and wearing a uniform, and he had a long black beard.'
'What made you think the man was Satan?'
'Because he was in the same fire that was all around Stella. He was walking in fire. I shouted out, 'You leave her alone! You hear me! Leave her alone!' And he turned to me and laughed, and he had gold teeth in his black beard, and I took my axe and run up to him, and I swung at him with the axe, and I kept swinging and swinging until I saw he was dead and bloody in the creek. Ha! I killed the devil that day!' And Otto, who had never said a word to defend his own life, was snarling like a mad dog when he said it.
"The reporter asked him, 'Why'd you put pepper in your socks?'
Otto said, "'You oughta know that. Red pepper keeps the devil away. He might come back and try to track me down for killing him.'
'Why didn't you tell the sheriff your story?'
'He would only think I'm lying. Do you believe me?'
"And the reporter said, 'I don't know.'
"Two weeks later Otto Davis was hanged by the neck until dead. Lyle was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary. But the story goes that the ball of fire has never gone away, that it moves up and down streams and creeks looking for something. Some say it's the ghost of Stella Barnes. But others say it's the devil."
"What do you think it is, Pa?" I asked. I was thinking about the ball of fire I saw down by the creek and under the rock shelf and the pale girl who had been summoned.
"I think it's just a superstition that's better left alone and not thought about at all."
I said, "Yes, sir, that makes sense," and that's why for the most part I have kept the story to myself.
When Pa died, I found a diary in his bureau, and in that diary was the account I just told you. Turns out, Pa had been the reporter, and he wrote the story down word for word. It was the last story he ever wrote for a paper.
"You want to know what I think? I think Stella Barnes took all that evil and violence and fire into her own soul, she made herself a sacrifice, and I think her soul turned that hate into a desire for justice and protection, and I think she swore by heaven and hell that she would never let any woman, girl, or child in these parts be violated again, if she could stop it. I think the ghost of Stella Barnes will haunt these creeks until the devil is driven out and sent screaming back to hell. That's what I think."
Thus ends the story of Stella Barnes as told by William Stumpff to Otis Bulfinch, August 20, 1972, in Harrison, Arkansas. May she rest in peace. Or maybe it's better that she doesn't.