King Blood

by Jim Thompson

  Jim Thompson

  KING BLOOD

  First Published in 1954

  Chapter One

  Just before first-light, just before dawn began its streaky buttering of the Territorial Oklahoma prairie, Critch stepped out to the open vestibule of the train and stood waiting there for the soldier's bride. She had to stop by the toilet (small wonder!) before she could join him, so there was time to brace himself for what he would do if her attitude demanded it; to visualize the ultimate scene in a drama of robbery and rape.

  Let the little lady get troublesome, and he'd knock her off the platform. Send her down between the two cars, and the grinding wheels of the train. There were seven cars behind this one. By the time they were done with her, the little lady would be mincemeat. A nothingness which would be less than nothing when daybreak brought coyotes and buzzards.

  Chuckling softly, Critch lighted a cheroot, thinking how praiseful Ray would have been had he been alive to praise. Oh, Ray would have approved handsomely. With, perhaps, one minor reservation.

  'Your eye on the target, dear boy. The vital spot. Which, I may add, is never found in the uterus. Unless—ha, ha—you're much better equipped than I.'

  Ah, Ray, Ray! But there were exceptions to all rules; and sometimes a pupil outstrips his teacher. The money was under her clothes, so how else could he get at it, except through the guise of love? And getting the money where he had gotten it had been his insurance. Unless she were a fool, she couldn't talk now. Unless a fool, she wouldn't try to retaliate. Otherwise, and regardless of her innocence in her despoiling, she would have to explain what could never be explained. Not to a husband. Not to any man who would be her husband. Not in this day and age.

  Critch puffed at his cheroot, meditating with unaccustomed wistfulness on Ray, the man who had been his guide and guardian for so many years. It was hard to think of Ray as having gotten old, of losing any of the craftiness which had pulled him out of so many tight places. Yet, despite the youthfully dapper body and the incredibly young face, he 'had' aged. Ray had gotten old, and his age showed in his tendency to waver when decisiveness was imperative, his quibbling and pettiness, and an incipiently fatal furtiveness of eye and manner.

  As Critch saw it, there was only one thing to be done. That which Ray would have done had their situations been reversed. Having done it, survival required that he put distance between himself and the victim of his betrayal. He put it there, brushing out his tracks as he fled.

  Ray remained in Texas. Critch wound up in the distant Dakotas. So, happily, he had not been present at the end, and could only witness it vicariously via a newspaper artist's eyes.

  Critch sincerely hoped that either the eyes or the artist had been bad. It would have pained him—for a little while at least—to believe that Ray's handsome neck had been stretched the length of his body.

  '(Critch tossed away his cheroot, impatiently. What the hell was keeping her? Had the damned fool fallen in the toilet?)'

  'Tulsa lochopocas.' A clanning place of the Osages.

  It stood at the twin-forks of the Arkansas, near the confluence of the Verdigris; a center of commerce (in so far as there was any) and a conference site long before white man ever set foot on the American continent.

  'Tulsa lochopocas.' Tulsey town. Tulsa.

  Critch had liked the looks of it from the moment he stepped off the train from Kansas City. It was a higgledy-piggledy kind of place, with streets running casually whatever way they damned pleased, and buildings sprawling and crawling all over hell and back in the ages-old pattern of quick money.

  It was his kind of town, he had thought. An easy-money town. A railroad and river town, a cotton and cattle town. Furs, lumber, foodstuffs. All flowed into and through Tulsa, an endless stream of increment. And now there was even oil, for prospectors with a spring-pole rig had drilled through the red-clay soil to a respectable gusher. In these surroundings, and without refining facilities, it had little commercial value as yet, being almost as worthless as some of those minerals you heard about only in books; uranium, for example. But never mind. There was plenty of money without oil, and the place virtually shouted the news that here one could do whatever he was big enough to do.

  Thus, Critch saw Tulsa. Correctly, he saw it so. What he did not see was something indefinable, something that far wiser and better men had failed to see at first glimpse of Tulsa (Tulsey Town, 'tulsa lochopocas).' Men who nominally 'were' big enough to do whatever they attempted.

  Approximately two centuries before, a man named Auguste Choteau led a small army of his countrymen up the Arkansas, professional hunters and trappers who had followed him profitably and safely all the way from France; and they had tied up their long-boats here at the twin-forks of the river—so patently perfect it was for their ends—and they had gone about their business of getting rich quickly.

  They were not hoggish about it. Not for a moment would they have enriched themselves while impoverishing the Indians. It had always been French policy to make friends with the Indians, and Choteau, a good man and a gentleman, would have done so anyway. He and his men intended to found a permanent settlement here; had even gone so far as to pick a name for it, the name of their patron saint. They would build a city here, one in which French and Osage would be equal. And how, why, being reasonable men, and to make these great events possible, could the Osages object to the sharing of a fraction of their furry wealth when they had such an unusable abundance of it?

  The Osages confessed to being reasonable men. Being reasonable, they suggested that there was no valid reason for sharing what they already owned, and that it was their prerogative, not the Frenchmen's, to decide whether or not they needed it all.

  The Choteau party became irritated. They got very firm with the denizens of 'tulsa lochopocas.' Nor were they the last to do so. For Tulsey Town's bland independence, her notion that she should deal with the world strictly on 'her' terms, grew stronger each day of her rambunctious history.

  More than two hundred years after her off-handed brushing-off of the French trappers and hunters, Tulsa was telling Wall Street to take its underwriting and financing and get hence (or words to that effect). The House of Morgan, 'et al.,' were amused rather than annoyed. The notion that an upstart Oklahoma town could itself raise the billions necessary for the proper exploitation of its oil resources was simply laughable. And yet...the upstart town 'did' raise those billions. Not only for itself but for others. And in the end, Wall Street was forced to admit that it had a rival. It remained first, in the big money capitals of the world, as a financier of the oil industry. But little Tulsa—or, rather, not-so-little Tulsa—ranked second to it.

  So there you were, then. There Tulsa was. A friendly town, an amiable live-and-let live town. A proud town, which liked doing things its own way and knew just what to do with those who would have it otherwise.

  As late as the early years of the Twentieth Century, there was riverboat traffic as far north as the Dakotas. So relatively much, compared with railroad commerce, that the Midwest was visualized as the future population center of the country, and there was agitation to move the nation's capital from its eastern site to some more suitable spot in Nebraska Territory.

  Because of her location, Tulsa was host to no small number of riverboat travelers, and she provided for them characteristically. Graves, for some. Tar and feathers for others. For others—those whose notions coincided with her own—homes and happiness, and often wealth.

  Similarly, when the Cherokee Strip was thrown open to settlement and the great ranches broken up into quarter-section homesteads, Tulsa provided for the now-jobless cowboys, the adventurers and desperadoes who had formerly roamed the Strip; taking care of them—in one way or another. And when the homesteaders, often underfinanc
ed, were drouthed out or otherwise brought to disaster in their first season, Tulsa was again a provider—in her own fashion.

  Tulsa knew just what to do about the Crazy Snake rebellion, the last of the Indian uprisings. She knew just what to do—and she did it—when race riots threatened to destroy the city. She...

  But that is getting ahead of the story. Moving back a couple of hundred years to Auguste Choteau and his men:

  Their "firmness' with the residents of 'tulsa lochopocas' was repaid with interest. The Frenchmen were, in fact, forced to flee for their lives; heading their long boats on up the Arkansas, and thence into and up the Mississippi, along whose shores, in an uninviting stretch of mudflats, they at last established their permanent settlement, duly naming it after their patron saint.

  It became a large and prosperous city, even as they had predicted. A city which Critch had often visited to his advantage. Now, at the end of his second day in Tulsa, with his wallet empty and the place where he carried it sore from a Tulsan's kicking, Critch cursed the foolish fate that had guided him here instead of to the friendly metropolis of Auguste Choteau's founding, the city of St. Louis.

  In fact, Tulsa had so unnerved him that he was even fearful of responding to the small box-notice in the local newspaper. A boldface-type announcement that Critchfield King, youngest son of Isaac Joshua King, should immediately present himself at the offices of Judge Washington Dying Horse, attorney-at-law.

  It took a night of hunger and sleeplessness, a very long night without money for food or room, to change his fearfulness to fatalism and the conclusion that life could dip him in no sourer pickle than he was already in. In the morning, then, after shaving and tidying up at the railroad station, he at last presented himself at Judge Dying Horse's office.

  They faced each other across the attorney's deal desk. Critch smiling equably, his manicured hands resting on the fake-gold head of his cane; the lawyer studying him out of dark and deep-set eyes, his bronzed face expressionless. Critch knew this waiting technique. The simple trick of it was to 'wait,' forcing one's opponent—and the world was made up of opponents—to tip his hand.

  At last the deep-set eyes surrendered to a blink, and their owner spoke. "So you're Critchfield King, and you're twenty-three years old."

  "I am and I am," Critch smiled, "and you're Judge Washington, uh—I don't believe I've encountered the name before, sir? Cherokee, isn't it?"

  It was gross flattery; the Cherokees were highly cultured, the most advanced of the Five Civilized Tribes. The attorney flatly rejected the compliment.

  "The judge is honorary, Mr. King, and the name is Osage. One of the 'un'-civilized tribes. 'Uncivilizable' in the opinion of the United States government. That's why we were allocated this particular area of Oklahoma, one that ostensibly was only good for fishing and hunting rather than farming."

  "So?" Critch made subtle alterations in his smile. "So you're plain Mr. Dying Horse, Osage lawyer, and you wanted to see me, Critchfield King, youngest son of Isaac Joshua King. Why?"

  "I want you," frowned the Osage, "to tell me about yourself from the time you fled your father's bed and board with your mother and her lover—"

  "I didn't flee it," Critch lied. "They abducted me."

  "That's likely; you were only ten. Now tell me all about yourself—what you've done, what you've become—from the age of ten to the present."

  "Why?"

  "Why not?"

  "Because there isn't much good to tell. Suppose you had been dominated by a professional criminal and a mother who was a whore and worse for the better part of your life. How much would you have to be proud of?"

  "Well..." Attorney Dying Horse nodded grudgingly. "But your mother herself ran away from this man. Chance—Raymond Chance—after a few years."

  "She did. Which left me completely under his control."

  "Didn't it occur to you to run away also?"

  "It did, and I did." Another lie, but it had all the earmarks of truth. "Unfortunately, I didn't have my mother's, uh, resources for survival. It wasn't until a few years ago that I was finally able to make it."

  "Mmm. And since then?"

  "A number of things. Bartender. Steamboat steward. Hotel clerk. Salesman..." The truth here; half the truth. He had had all those occupations, and many more, but only as springboards, entrees, to devious enterprise. "I've spent most of my time lately in speculation."

  "Cotton?"

  "What else?"

  Dying Horse gave him a slow totting up: the expensive suit and hat; the handmade boots and spotless linen. A fine-looking, well-spoken young man. One who was almost too handsome; too plausible. Indian instinct whispered that here was a man neither to be liked nor trusted, yet he did like him and he did trust him.

  "You seem to have done well at speculating, Mr. King."

  "I've made a living."

  "Such transactions are hard to trace."

  "Impossible, I'd say."

  "In fact," the attorney persisted doggedly, "I doubt that any part of your story could be checked on for truth and veracity."

  "I doubt it, too. And?"

  The Osage sighed; laughed a little irritably. Instinct gave way to the compelling charm and personality of Critch King's (when he cared to use it), and abruptly he slammed his desk with an emphatic bronzed hand.

  "And, Mr. King," he said, coming to his feet, "I think we should continue this discussion over drinks."

  In the private room of one of Tulsa's fancier saloons, an establishment with carpeted floors and crystal chandeliers, the lawyer poured whiskey for them and held a match to Critch King's cigar. He took a delicate taste of the liquor, studying his young guest over the brim of his glass. Critch was interestedly examining a framed document which hung on the wall—a handwritten testimonial to the saloon, signed by Washington Irving.

  "You know 'A Tour of the Prairies,' Mr. King?"

  "I thought I did until I saw this." Critch nodded at the document. "I didn't know Mr. Irving was ever in the Tulsa area."

  Dying Horse chuckled approvingly; agreed that the point was certainly moot. "But we've had the printing arts, and the arts and craftsmen associated with them, in Eastern Oklahoma for a very long time. George Creekmore's newspaper was possibly the first major periodical west of the Mississippi."

  "A Cherokee language newspaper," Critch nodded. "Then this testimonial is probably a forgery?"

  "Mmm. Done by a tramp journeyman with a small talent and a large thirst. Like the etching over there, for example."

  Critch arose and walked over to the far wall. He took a long look at the drawing which hung there, a picture of an Indian mounted on a pony, their heads bowed dispiritedly as they stared down the face of a cliff.

  "No—" with a shake of his head, Critch sat back down at their table. "I'd have to disagree with you there, sir. That's a genuine Remington if I ever saw one."

  "You're a good judge of art, Mr. King!"

  "Thank you, sir."

  "You're a remarkable young man, all around. How anyone could have overcome the handicaps you must have suffered to become a gentleman and a scholar...!"

  Critch murmured appreciation for the lawyer's good opinion, modestly pointing out that hardship often brought out the best in a man. "When a man's got no one to help him, he simply has to try harder. At least, that's the way I've always seen it. If a man truly wants to make something of himself, he can do it, regardless of birth and background!"

  Dying Horse looked into his guest's innocently earnest young face, his heart warming as it seldom did to a white man. 'Regardless of birth.' Now here was understanding for you! Here was a man who knew what it was to suffer and struggle against unbearable odds.

  'God damn Ike King! he thought. Practically on his death-bed, and he treats his own son like this!'

  He took a quick drink, then another. Critch smiled at him gently, gave one of the bronzed hands a comforting pat.

  "Don't let it upset you, Judge. I haven't seen my father since I was a
child, but I don't imagine he's changed any."

  "No."

  "I've often thought that if he'd treated my mother a little differently..." Critch shook his head regretfully. "She was part Creek, you know, and she had rather crisp, curly hair. Dad used to accuse her of being part Negro."

  "He did, eh?" Dying Horse laughed angrily. "Sounds about like him!"

  "Of course, there was some intermarriage among the Creeks," Critch shrugged. "But what of it, anyway? At any rate, why taunt a woman publicly with something she couldn't help?"

  The Osage gulped another large drink, a red flush spreading under the lighter hue of his face. He brought the heavy glass down on the table with a bang.

  'Getting a little drunk, Critch thought shrewdly. When will these stinking Indians learn that they can't drink?'

  "Mr. King—'hic, hup—'your father is, as you may know, my client in this area. It was my duty, if you could be found, to look you over and to decide whether you were fit to be claimed as his son and heir. I have decided, in the affirmative. The only question in my mind is whether he is fit to be claimed as your father!"

  Critch smiled a soft demurral. After all, they shouldn't be too hard on the old man.

  "I'll welcome the chance to see him before he dies. I would have gone back before this, but I wasn't sure of my reception."

  "You'll find it satisfactory," Dying Horse assured him, "under the circumstances. Now, if you were down on your luck, if you'd been a failure in life and really needed help..."

  "I'd certainly never go near Dad," Critch laughed, ruefully. "A strange man, my father, but fair—absolutely fair—in his own way. He never excused his own failures, so why should he excuse them in others?"

  "But his own son," the lawyer protested. "His own flesh and blood!"

  "Only if he chose to claim me as a son," Critch pointed out. "Which he wouldn't do unless I met his standards."

  They talked a while longer. Then, the lawyer glanced at the clock and remembered an appointment. As he reached for his wallet and beckoned to a waiter, Critch laid a ten-dollar bill on the table.