Hell Snake

by Bernard Schaffer

  Pepper shook his head and laughed. He set his pen back down on the desk and said, “You really are a remarkable example of your species, Edwin. I made the right choice when I selected you to be this settlement’s Indian Police officer.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Folsom said.

  Pepper got up from his chair and went to his office door. He opened it up and leaned his head out toward the two armed guards standing nearby. “Go and tell the others to cut that body down. Tell them to put it in a wheelbarrow and take it to wherever that boy’s family is and leave it with them.”

  Pepper shut the door and clapped his hands together. “Well then, that’s done. I wasn’t looking forward to the smell if we got any warm days, I’ll tell you that much in confidence.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Folsom said.

  Pepper sat back down. “How’s your reading?”

  “I enjoy reading,” Folsom said.

  “Good for you.” Pepper slid his letter across the desk and said, “Why don’t you read that and tell me if it all makes sense to you. I figure, if even an Indian can understand it, the governor should have no problem.”

  Folsom saw the letter was addressed to His Honorable Charles N. Haskell, First Governor of the State of Oklahoma.

  Pepper shook his head and laughed quietly. “Isn’t it astonishing how far we’ve come? Did you know in 1851, California’s governor said we were going to make the Indian race extinct? He wasn’t kidding around about it either. California would send out local militia groups on hunting expeditions to take out all you little buggers. Do you know how much money scalp hunters used to be able to make? Back then, we’d get fifty cents a scalp, five dollars for a whole head, and sometimes they’d pay a cool five hundred for the entire body.”

  “We, sir?” Folsom asked.

  “Not we as in me, of course,” Pepper said quickly. “We meaning us. Americans. Hang on. Take a look at this.” Pepper opened the top drawer of his desk and rummaged through the papers there until he found a sheet stamped US Army intelligence in red. “This is a report about how they killed two hundred and forty Indians in a two-week period. You have to hear this. Here it is: We took one boy into the valley and the infants were put out of their misery and a girl ten years of age was killed for stubbornness.” He looked at Folsom. “Now, here you are sitting in this office reading a letter written by an Indian agent to the governor of that very same state. Tell me that isn’t progress.”

  Pepper put the report back in the drawer and closed it. “Since we’ve extinguished the Indian Territory and Oklahoma is finally officially recognized, there’s a whole world of opportunity here. I consider it my personal mission in life to lead the Indian out of savagery and into a more civilized future. You’re a big part of helping me accomplish that mission, Edwin. I want you to know that.” He saw the way Folsom was holding the letter and frowned. “Here, hand that back to me. Your hands are dirty.”

  Folsom handed the letter back and apologized. Several soldiers walked past the window on their way toward the gate. The last of them was pushing a wheelbarrow.

  “You’re a credit to your race, Edwin,” Pepper said. “You keep doing a good job and we’ll see if we can’t get you sworn in as a US marshal someday. They got a few Indians in the marshals now, did you know that?”

  “I had heard that, sir,” Folsom said.

  “Stick with me and you’ll go places, boy.”

  “I will, sir,” Folsom said.

  Pepper opened another drawer and pulled out a locked metal box. He reached into his vest pocket and drew out a brass key that was tied to a string inside the pocket. He fitted the brass key into the box and raised the lid. It was filled with blank Indian ration tickets. He drew out one of the tickets and started writing on it with his pen. “Supply wagons just came in, so everything is nice and fresh. No mold or bugs or rats,” Pepper said. He put check marks next to every item on the card—beef, beans, flour, salt, coffee, soap, tobacco, and sugar—then signed the ticket and handed it to Folsom.

  Folsom slid the card in his pocket.

  “Don’t tell anyone I gave you that,” Pepper said. “It’s our little secret.”

  * * *

  * * *

  They buried Menewa that evening. The people were forbidden to sing or to form a drum circle. They were forbidden to dance. They offered their prayers and respect in silence, then went back to their tepees and closed the flaps.

  The soldiers kept to their side of the road during the funeral. They ate hot meals and drank and watched from a distance and did not interfere.

  Edwin Folsom stayed away. He knew he would be unwelcome at the gathering and had no heart to intrude. He sat before the small fire in the center of his tepee and held the eagle feather in his hands. He touched the eagle feather to his forehead and said a prayer for Menewa and his family.

  He pulled the extra ration ticket out of his pocket and looked at it in the firelight. The word “beef” had been the source of much grief to the people who’d been forced to relocate into the settlement. None of them had ever tasted food made with flour or sugar before and it had made large numbers of them sick. The other items were suitable when they had not gone to rot, but it was the beef that the white man was proudest of providing, and it was the beef that so many had chosen to starve rather than eat.

  True beef, the meat of the bison, tasted rich and sweet. The beef that the white man gave out was dry and bland and sickly-looking. Folsom did not believe the stories around the settlement that the beef was poisoned, but he had little trouble understanding why the others did.

  A shadow appeared outside the tepee and Folsom turned his head toward the entrance. “Who’s there?” he called out.

  He got up and pushed the flap open and saw an elderly woman standing in front of him, clutching an old blanket around her shoulders. Her fingers were strong and bony and she stood facing him with a straight back and a raised chin. Her hair was long and braided and gray.

  “You are the one they call the Indian Police officer?” she asked.

  “I am,” Folsom said.

  “I would speak with you,” she said.

  Folsom moved the flap aside for her to enter and moved his hand toward the fire for her to sit. “Where is your badge?” she asked.

  He picked his vest up off the ground from where he’d dropped it. The badge was still pinned to the lapel. He moved the fabric aside and showed it to her. She squinted to read the words engraved on it, then nodded and sat back down. “My name is Winema,” she said.

  Folsom opened his mouth to tell her who he was, but she cut him off.

  “I know who you are,” she said. “You are Edwin, son of Siisiiyei, the Lighthorseman.”

  “Did you know my father?” Folsom asked.

  “No,” she said. “We knew of him and Istaqa and all the others. Songs were sung about the men chosen by the Five Nations to enforce our law. Not the white man’s law. Our law,” she said. “Only the finest riders and bravest warriors were selected and Siisiiyei was a rare spirit, even among them.” Her eyes narrowed. “Disbanding them and replacing them with what you are was a grave mistake.”

  Folsom held his hands out to the fire to warm them. The flames were making him tired. It had been a long day and he had no wish to spend the rest of it listening to an old woman’s insults. “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  “I want to know if you are the son of Siisiiyei or a bug who trembles under the boot of his white master,” she said.

  Folsom sighed because he finally knew what the old woman had come for. There had been others who’d come to ask him the same things. “The answer is no,” he said. “I will not steal anything for you, and no, I will not kill the agent or any of the soldiers. Do not try and convince me otherwise. Others have tried and when they would not listen, I arrested them and handed them over to the agent.”

  “Are y
ou unwilling to take life on behalf of your people?” Winema asked. “Or are you just unwilling to lose it?”

  “That is not the point,” Folsom said. “If I did go and kill one of them, or ten of them, or even twenty, it would not matter, because it would not be enough. The ones left would turn their guns on the rest of you and whatever life remains to our people would be finished.”

  “Would a warrior not prefer death over imprisonment?”

  “For himself,” Folsom said. “I know of no warriors who would sacrifice the ones they love to that same fate if they could prevent it.”

  She looked at him from across the fire. “I did not come to ask you to steal or to kill,” she said. “Put such thoughts out of your mind. I came to see what is in your heart.”

  “What business is that of yours?” he asked.

  “A girl has gone missing from this place and her parents think she was taken by a group of white men,” Winema said. “They asked me to come speak with you and see if you will bring her home.”

  “White men?” Folsom asked. “What white men? Soldiers?”

  “No,” Winema said. “Not soldiers.”

  Folsom frowned as he considered what she was saying. “I will speak to Agent Pepper in the morning,” he said. “He will decide what is to be done.”

  “He will do nothing and you know it,” Winema said.

  “That is the best I can do,” he said.

  “The best you can do is find the girl and bring her home. If the men who took her will not give her back, then you must punish them for the dishonor they have committed against our people.”

  “I have no authority over any white man for crimes against our people,” Folsom said. “Now, if you will excuse me, I am tired and it is getting late.”

  The old woman did not move. “What you speak is untrue, Edwin Folsom,” she said.

  Folsom screwed up his face in confusion. “How would you know anything about what I am or am not allowed to do?”

  Winema removed a small pouch from inside her shirt. The pouch was made of old, fine leather and was decorated with fringe. The front of the pouch was covered in small black and white beads.

  Folsom looked at the entrance to his tepee to make sure no one was coming.

  “Why do you look so afraid?” Winema asked.

  “If they knew you had that, you would be hanged next,” he said.

  “It is against the law to have this? It was made by my grandmother and passed down to me. I have had this for forty years.”

  “It is against the law to make, sell, or possess any clothing or other items except for what we have been provided,” he told her. “You were supposed to hand that over with your clothes when you came here.”

  She smiled and said, “I know.”

  “I am supposed to arrest you for having it,” he said.

  She turned the pouch over in her hand so that he could see the detail of the beadwork across its front. The beads formed the image of a coiled snake. When Folsom bent closer, he saw that the snake’s eyes were closed. “Is it sleeping or dead?” he asked.

  “No one can say,” she said. She reached into the pouch and pulled out a yellowed scrap of newspaper that she carefully unfolded. “Come sit next to me and read this.”

  Folsom did as he was told. The headline announced a court ruling in 1888 in a matter involving the Indians.

  “What does it say?” Winema asked.

  “Hand it to me so I can see it,” he said.

  “No. You might take it and burn it. Lean down instead and read it while I hold it.”

  Folsom sighed and bent down to read the faded print in the dim firelight. “It says a woman named Minnie was arrested at the Umatilla reservation in Oregon for committing adultery. What does this have to do with anything?”

  “Go on,” she said.

  Folsom kept reading until he came to the part that said the court had been unable to agree on what limits to set on Indians acting as police officers, which meant, in effect, no limits were set upon them at all.

  “There,” the old woman said. “You see it, don’t you?”

  Folsom sat up and went back to his seat. “That means nothing,” he said.

  “It means everything!” Winema said. “When the white man speaks, false words fall out of his mouth like grains of sand, but he rules by the things he writes down in his books. If it is written, it is law, for all to see. Why can we not use it for our people?”

  Folsom raised his eyebrows and exhaled slowly. “I will have to think on this. What is said in the court in some faraway place and what is said here, by the agent I answer to, are different things.”

  Winema stood up and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders once more. “The missing girl’s family lives along the eastern border of the settlement. If I see you there, I will know you are the son of Siisiiyei. If I do not, I will know the things they say about you are true.”

  After she left, Folsom sat staring at the fire for a long time. Finally he reached into his pocket for the ration card and tossed it into the flames, watching as it turned black and its edges curled up inside of itself until it crumbled to ash.

  * * *

  * * *

  The next morning Edwin Folsom walked back to the Indian agent’s office. He knocked on the door and waited until he was told to come in. Agent Pepper was still in the process of taking off his coat and putting his hat on its hook. “Back again, Edwin?” Pepper took the lit cigar out of his mouth and said, “I hope you’re not here to ask me any more favors. The boys were quite unhappy about having to take down your friend and let him be buried. They thought we should have left him there until the birds finished with him.”

  Folsom looked past Pepper at the rows of books on the shelves lining the far walls of the office. “No, I have done enough for those ungrateful bastards,” he said.

  “Well, you know what they say. No good deed goes unpunished,” Pepper said. “So what can I do for you?”

  “Actually, sir, I was wondering if I might borrow some of your lawbooks.”

  “Really?” Pepper asked. He walked to his desk and tapped his cigar in the ashtray there. “What for?”

  “I am thinking I should become a lawyer,” Folsom said. “After we spoke, I thought I must do more to become civilized and set a good example for my people.”

  “Well,” Pepper said, settling in his chair, “I think that would be absolutely splendid. You could be another Charles Curtis!”

  Folsom shrugged his shoulders. “Who is that, sir?”

  “A very good friend of mine, and he’s part Indian. His mother was a Kaw, descended from White Plume himself. Or was she Osage? Ah well, it’s not important. What’s important is he just got himself elected to the Senate.”

  “Most civilized,” Folsom said.

  “Exactly!” Pepper said. “Can you imagine if I could say one of my Indians managed to become a lawyer under my supervision? That would be a feather in my cap indeed.”

  Folsom nodded. “So I can use your books?”

  “Of course,” Pepper said. “They’re yours to use as you see fit. I’d only ask that you take one at a time, just in case something happens to them. They’re quite expensive, you know. I’d certainly hate to see something happen to more than one of them and you winding up owing me more money than you can ever hope to earn.”

  “I understand,” Folsom said. “Thank you.” He walked over to the shelves and ran his thumb across the spines. The books were titled by year and included all of the important court rulings for that year, throughout the country. He found the book titled UNITED STATES FEDERAL and MUNICIPAL RULINGS for 1888 and opened it up to the table of contents. Halfway down, he found it. US v. Clapox. He snapped the book shut and turned around.

  “Found the one you want to start with?” Pepper asked. “Which one is it?”

 
Folsom showed him the spine and Pepper squinted to read it. “Why 1888? Don’t you want to start with the first volume?” Pepper asked.

  “That would be wise,” Folsom said. “But as you know, the number eight is lucky for my people. It is best to start with this one.”

  Pepper smacked the table and laughed. “Of course!” he said. “If you hadn’t known that, I was going to tell you that’s the right one to start with.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Folsom said. “One more thing. I have noticed a few squatters in the outer boundaries of the settlement. They have been collecting rations but they have not been doing any work for the soldiers.”

  “What?” Pepper said. “That can’t be. No, no, no, that is not how we do things around here.”

  “I know, sir,” Folsom said. “I would like to handle the situation personally.”

  Pepper cocked an eyebrow at him. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. I am your Indian Police officer and these are Indians who must learn what it means to be civilized. I will teach them. If I must, I will set an example for everyone else to see.”

  “Well, okay!” Pepper said. “That’s the spirit. You know something, Officer Folsom? I like this new side of you. I really do.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Folsom said. “Do you think I should take my gun and a horse, sir?”

  “Obviously,” Pepper said. “They’ll be less likely to resist when they see you riding down there with your badge and gun on one of our big geldings, don’t you agree?”

  “You are right, sir.”

  “That’s why they call me the Wise White Father, is it not?” Pepper asked. He stood up and walked over to an oak chest in the corner of the room. He removed the key from inside his vest pocket and inserted it into the chest to open it, then pulled out a black leather gun belt and holster and a large knife sheath adorned with brightly colored beadwork and rusted brass rivets. Inside the holster was a Colt Peacemaker with a black walnut handle, and sticking out of the knife sheath was an engraved wooden handle with a brass guard. “These were your father’s, were they not?”