Bonnie and Clyde Series #10: Platte City Traditional Geocache
Bonnie and Clyde Series #10: Platte City
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This is a series based on “Bonnie and Clyde”. The series contains
13 caches which 12 caches contain a clue for the final 13th cache.
Please do not remove clue from cache. Please leave for fellow
cachers to enjoy as well. This series does not require you to find
a cache in any particular order, but the first 12 are needed in
order to find the final cache. You may want to read each story
associated with the corresponding cache as each one may hold a clue
for a later cache or the final cache
It was well after dark on the evening of July 18, 1933, when a dark
coupe pulled into the Red Crown Tourist Camp on a stretch of gravel
highway just outside Platte City, Missouri. A redhead (Blanche)
with a nice figure and wearing riding-style britches and a puffy
blouse entered the cubicle of an office and asked for two rooms.
She seemed elusive to night clerk Delbert Crabtree’s inquiries --
and very high strung. Paying cash, she dashed out and joined her
shadowy comrades in the car waiting outside. Crabtree dimmed the
office lights so that he could peer through the curtain towards the
two cabins which they rented. He watched as the party emerged, five
in all, one being another woman whose leg looked heavily bandaged.
She shuffled with considerable pain. But, it was the appearance of
those guns that bothered him. Each of the men -- one of whom joined
the lady in the riding britches in one cabin, and two others who
helped the bandaged lady into the other cabin -- toted a rifle.
Crabtree glanced at the index card of important numbers he kept
taped below the cash register and dialed the number of the highway
patrol. Captain William Baxter, after hearing the clerk’s
suspicions, promised to check them out. "A bandaged lady," Crabtree
had said. Baxter pondered...he recalled that Bonnie Parker was
severely injured in an auto accident about a month earlier, then
disappeared. Yes, he thought, this made sense, and alerted both his
own county forces and the Platte City Police Department. The
following morning, Wednesday, July 19, Clyde hitchhiked into the
city, preferring to keep their car in the cabin garage lest the
police already had it identified. In town he bought salve, gauze
and pills for Bonnie who had been recovering nicely, but still
required constant care. (Because a tendon had been injured, she
still could not stand well by herself.) Clyde arrived back at the
Red Crown just after nightfall, tipping his Stetson at the amiable
elderly couple who gave him a lift in their flatbed truck. He could
see the lights lit through orange curtains in both his and Buck’s
windows. As assigned, Blanche and W.D. had taken turns watching his
Bonnie throughout the day. In the smallest of the two bags he
carried were a half-dozen cream-filled donuts, Bonnie’s favorite
kind. The other contained medicinals, as well as some food for the
crew. Before stepping into his cabin, he noticed, for the first
time, what a quiet and pleasant night this was. Tonight, he
believed things were looking up. Before midnight, life would change
for Bonnie and Clyde. The very brief life they had left to live.
They ran before and had even been scared, but after tonight the
couple would drift in an appallingly starker reality than they
could handle. What innocence and naiveté remained in the world
would die. If it’s true that war changes a person, it changed
Bonnie and Clyde. Tonight, hell would break through the limestone
to make the gun battle at Joplin look like a water-pistol fight.
Crickets chirruped loudly. And that was about anyone in the tourist
camp detected -- not even the sound of crunching gravel beneath the
tires of the armored truck and its convoy of squads that snaked in
idle gear onto the grounds. The squads lined up in front of two
particular cabins pointed out by the desk clerk, and the armored
truck budged in front of the garage doors between the two cabins.
It snuffed its engine. When all vehicles were in place, their
lights shot on as a unit, one great beam spotting the front-line of
cabins. One policeman banged his flashlight on Buck Barrow’s door,
loud enough to wake both cabins. "Open up!" is all he said.
Blanche’s voice sounded frightened within: "You need to wait till I
get dressed," she twittered. The policeman then stepped away from
the stoop, quickly; he knew what was coming next. Clyde was already
at his window, and realizing their predicament, barked his Browning
automatic into the blinding light in front of him. W.D. cut loose
with a burst of his machine gun. Next door, Buck, too, was blasting
away. And then it happened: the army of policemen met the gang’s
defiant shots with a volley that shook the floorboards, a firepower
that the bandits had never encountered face-on. They leaped back to
avoid the energy that burst apart the window frames and door jams,
a barrage that sent plate-size clumps of plaster falling from the
ceiling. Obstinate, Buck Barrow attempted to fire back into the
onslaught. Stepping too near to his window, two bullets caught his
skull. Blood gushed onto Blanche who, behind him, caught him in her
arms. Clyde had picked up Bonnie, fairly well doped with pain
killers. Ducking, he kicked open the narrow door that led into the
interior of the garage. With W.D.’s help, he lay her in a
half-prone position on the back seat. Checking the radiator of
their automobile, W.D. was glad to see that bullets hadn’t yet
penetrated the garage; it was then he caught sight of the armored
police vehicle blocking them in. W.D. knew that the one penetrable
item on the monster was, oddly enough, its door. As Clyde carried
his maimed brother out to the getaway car, W.D. filled the facing
door of the armored van with hundreds of Swiss cheese holes. Inside
its cab, the driver dodged ricocheting bullets and caught several
in his knees and thighs. In desperation, he reared the vehicle back
from the line of fire. And as he did, the Barrow coupe split
through the garage doors and into the open courtyard. Had the
police outside been ready, Clyde would have driven into the
cannon’s mouth. But, because the police couldn’t believe this
audacity, their trigger fingers stunned long enough to permit Clyde
the advantage. He sped directly in front of and past the cordon. At
the edge of the driveway, several detectives were ready, aimed, and
they fired. The back window of the fleeing auto shattered, one
bullet striking W.D.’s shoulder. From the side, even while Clyde
veered to avoid them, another group of plainclothesmen got off a
couple of final shots, one that obliterated the window nearest
Blanche. Stooped over her dying husband to protect him from further
harm, a shard of glass pierced her right eye. "I’m blind!" she
screamed, and the police heard her wailing as the Barrows roared
into the night, much worse for wear. Buck was dying and Blanche was
blinded. W.D. shivered with a chill, having lost blood, and wept.
Bonnie moaned, seeming to be having bad dreams. Clyde couldn’t go
on like this. Driving hours out of Platte City, he pulled aside
along the dark country highway and instructed W.D. to steal an
automobile parked in the driveway of a set-back farm house. That
done, the two cars, their lights out, turned into the next turnoff
they encountered -- Dexfield Park on the Middle Raccoon River, a
natural forest preserve where they could at least get a little
water.
Buck Barrow mortally wounded as Blanche screams
(AP)
Back at the Red Crown, the police were licking their minor wounds,
considering. Deputy Highfill, the armored car driver, had taken
buckshot, but would live; a Sergeant Coffey had a neck wound; his
son Clarence (also a lawman) was struck in the elbow. But they were
already regrouping and driving off in organized manhunts. They knew
they had made pincushions of the gang members. In the first light
of dawn, Clyde could see how bad his brother’s injury was. Part of
the forehead was blown away under a mass of coagulating blood. Buck
stammered, rambling on about things that made no sense. His head
lay in the lap of his wife, Blanche, who wore his pair of tinted
sunshades to keep whatever light she could from her stinging eye.
W.D. had cleansed his wound and had applied a makeshift tourniquet
that Bonnie made for him. Much better physically this morning than
her fellow fugitives, Bonnie repaid their kindness to her by
dressing their wounds, feeding them, and offering words of
encouragement. More than all, she refused to let them see that she
was frightened. Really frightened. She had a right to be. The war
was not over. An early morning hunter had happened upon the
bandits’ grove unseen and had immediately notified the sheriff’s
office that, in turn, deputized every local townsfolk available.
More than a hundred men answered the call, for the bounty on Bonnie
and Clyde had skyrocketed overnight. Not long after sunrise, Bonnie
caught sight of movement in the brush which encircled the clearing.
"Clyde," she called out, "it’s them again!" The gang managed to get
into the nearest car, the one they had had at the tourist camp, but
every path wheelman Clyde tried to take from the clearing was
blocked by smoking squirrel rifles. One huntsman hit his mark,
Clyde, who caught a bullet in the arm; the car sped out of control
and smashed into a tree. The gang stumbled out. Bonnie felt a
bullet tear her arm muscle. W.D. wobbled when one grazed his
cranium. Finding that their other escape car had been shot apart --
doors blown off the hinges, tires flattened, grillwork issuing a
volcano of steam -- they had no alternative but to run into the
greenwood. They were unable to reach Buck and Blanche who had
spilled from the other side of the car upon impact, and cowered,
huddled together under a hail of bullets overhead.
Blanche & Buck Barrow
Blanche & Buck Barrow Buck would die three days later in a
hospital bed, his head and brain half gone. Circumstantial Blanche
would receive ten years in a women’s prison. Bonnie and Clyde
remained on the loose. They wandered the rest of that day through
cornfields, nursing their wounds, hiding in barns, eating orchard
fruit, until Clyde was able to steal another car. W.D., lost in the
ruckus at Dexfield Park, made no attempt to find his company. He
had had enough of fame and glory.
Congratulations to senator_k and madcat88k for
FTF and STF
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Onfr bs n Gerr