Sixkiller, U.S. Marshal

by William W. Johnstone

  Under the soft, golden light of three gleaming chandeliers, the atmosphere in Nippy’s Saloon was quite congenial. Half a dozen men stood at one end of the bar, engaged in friendly conversation, while at the other end, the barkeep stayed busy cleaning glasses. Most of the tables were filled with farmers, draymen, and storekeepers, and they were telling tall tales and flirting with the bar girls who were flitting about the saloon like bees from clover blossom to clover blossom.

  It was the middle of summer but the two heating stoves had not been taken down. They were cold now, but when someone got close enough, there was a distinctive aroma of wood smoke from the stoves’ winter activity. Mixed with the scent of retired wood smoke were the smells of liquor, tobacco, women’s perfume, and the occasional odor of men, too long at work, and with too few baths.

  At the moment, John Henry, who had taken advantage of the hotel’s bathing room, was now enjoying the ambience of Nippy’s Saloon. He was engaged in a game of stud poker with five players he had befriended, including the deputy city marshal, the doctor, the owner of the newspaper, and two of the community’s merchants.

  “I believe it is your bet, Marshal Sixkiller,” the deputy marshal said.

  John Henry looked at the pot, then down at his hand. He was showing one five, and two sixes. His down-card was another five. He had hoped to fill a full house with his last card, but pulled a three, instead.

  “Well?” the deputy asked.

  It was easy to see why the deputy was anxious. He had John Henry beat, with the three jacks he had showing.

  “I fold,” John Henry said, closing his cards.

  Two of the other players folded, and two stayed, but the three jacks won the pot.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, thank you,” the deputy said, chuckling as he raked in his winnings.

  After a couple of drinks at the bar and a few flirtatious exchanges with one of the bar girls, John Henry went next door to the hotel, then upstairs to his room. He lit the lantern and walked over to the window to adjust it to catch the night breeze. That was when he saw a wink of light in the hay-loft over the livery across the street. He knew, even before he heard the gun report, what it was he had seen and, even though it was too late, he reflexively jerked away from the window, as the bullet crashed through the glass and slammed into the wall on the opposite side of the room.

  There was another shot on the heels of the first shot, but by this time John Henry had moved away from the window and dropped down to the floor. He reached up to extinguish the lantern.

  “What was that?” someone shouted from down on the street.

  “Gunshots. Sounded like they came from the—”

  That was as far as the disembodied voice got before yet a third shot crashed through the window. If John Henry thought the first two shots had cleaned out all the glass, he was mistaken, for there was another shattering, tinkling sound of bullets crashing through glass.

  With his pistol in his hand, John Henry climbed out of the window, scrambled to the edge of the porch, and dropped down onto the street.

  Because he was now in the darkened shadows between the hotel and the saloon, he knew that whoever was over in the livery couldn’t see him. That also meant that he couldn’t see the man who had been shooting at him, which made the disadvantage equal.

  John Henry circled around behind the saloon, then ran up between the saloon and the restaurant which was next door.

  “Who is shooting?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Has anybody been hit?”

  “Get off the street! Everyone, get off the street!”

  John Henry didn’t recognize the first three callers but he recognized the last. It was the voice of the deputy city marshal. John Henry saw him standing just in front of the saloon trying to see what was going on. He also saw, in the dim light cast through the windows of the saloon, the shooter. The shooter was armed with a rifle and stepping into the opening of the loft of the livery, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and took aim at the deputy city marshal.

  “Deputy, get down!” John Henry shouted as he raised his pistol to fire at the shooter.

  The deputy, hearing both John Henry’s shout and the report of the gun, dropped onto the ground. As it turned out, that precaution wasn’t necessary. John Henry’s pistol shot had been accurate, and the shooter in the livery loft dropped his rifle, grabbed his stomach, then pitched forward, falling hard on the ground below.

  With his pistol still in hand, John Henry rushed across the street to check on the man he had shot. He was lying facedown and very still.

  “Who is this?” the deputy asked, arriving shortly after John Henry.

  Using his foot, John Henry turned the body over.

  “His name is Redbone,” John Henry said. “Lucas Redbone.”

  “Lucas Redbone?” the deputy replied. “I’ve heard of him, but what is he doing here in Arkansas? I thought he hung around out in Indian Territory.”

  “Normally, he does. Or he did,” John Henry said, correcting himself. “I expect he was here to kill me.”

  “Let me get this straight, now. He was here to kill you, but you wound up killing him.”

  “Yes.”

  The deputy laughed. “Marshal Sixkiller, remind me never to get you pissed off about anything.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “You may wonder why I invited you back,” Parker said.

  John Henry chuckled. “I didn’t exactly consider it an invitation, Judge. I looked at it more like an order.”

  “Yeah, you might say that. But invitation or order, you have wondered about it, haven’t you?”

  “I confess that I have given it some thought,” John Henry replied.

  “Railroads.”

  “Railroads?”

  “Yes, sir, railroads. The government is about to grant the authority for a railroad—one railroad—to pass through Indian Territory on the way to Texas.”

  “Yes, I think I have heard something about that.”

  Judge Parker took another swallow of his drink.

  “Well, this is something you may not have heard. The government says that the railroad that reaches the Indian Territory first will be the one that gets the rights to cross through Indian Territory. That means there is going to be a race between them.

  “Now, whichever railroad wins, the race is going to make millions of dollars, and whichever railroad loses is going to be left sucking hind tit. And that kind of setup is a recipe for trouble. I want you to monitor the progress of the railroads.”

  “All right,” John Henry agreed.

  Colonel Robert S. Stevens, president of the KATY Railroad was meeting with his chief engineer, Otis Gunn, and his construction boss, John Scullin. On the table between them, maps had been rolled out and held flat by inkwells and paperweights. The maps showed what progress the railroad was making toward Indian Territory. More specifically, the maps were detailing the difficulties they were having and the problems they were facing.

  The railroad would not survive unless it could go all the way through to Texas to tap into the lucrative cattle shipment business. But, in order to do that, it would have to cross through Indian Territory. And to win that right, the KATY railroad was in a race with the Border Tier Railroad.

  The Border Tier was a formidable opponent, for it was owned by James Joy, who also owned the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, as well as the Michigan Central. In addition, he had an interest in the New York Central, and he had secured control of the Hannibal and St. Joseph, merging it with the Burlington. Once he completed construction of the Kansas City, St. Joseph and Council Bluffs line, it gave him a through railroad from New York City, via Chicago, Council Bluffs, and Kansas City to the entire frontier.

  James Joy had turned his attention to securing a railroad south from Kansas City through the Indian Territory and across Texas, all the way to the Gulf. At the moment, his Border Tier line was at about the same stage of construction as was the KATY. And that meant that th
e race was going to be bitterly fought.

  Colonel Stevens of the KATY line was well aware of the difficulties facing his railroad as he listened to Gunn and Scullin point out the troubles they were encountering.

  Scullin, an Irish immigrant, spoke with a heavy accent. “Colonel, sure ’n’ m’boys is strung out all the way between here and the border they are, and the half of ’em loafin’ and gettin’ into mischief for the want of materials and supplies.”

  “What do you need?” Stevens asked.

  “And where would you want me to be startin’? ’Tis ever’thing we are needin’. We need pilin’s, masonry, iron, ties, rails, spikes.”

  “He’s telling you the truth, Colonel,” Gunn said. “Right now we’re being held up at every river, stream, creek, and gully crossing for the lack of iron and timbers to build a bridge.”

  Colonel Stevens listened to the two men who were the most critical components of his getting the railroad to the Kansas border in time and, in so doing, ensuring the survival of the KATY. He nodded, and stroked his chin before he answered.

  “Otis, John, I can’t stress this enough. We have to win this race, do you understand? We have no alternative, for if we don’t get the right to go through Indian Territory down into Texas, the KATY will not survive. That being the case, I don’t want anything to hold us up. If the work trains aren’t getting through, then hire teams and wagons. Take on as many men as you want, and hire them from anywhere you can. Buy whatever you need and if you can’t buy it, then by God, just take it. I’ll settle accounts later. And get the material laid out ahead of your work crews. I don’t want a bunch of men standing around leaning on their shovels and picks because there isn’t material to work with.

  “From now, until we reach the border of Indian Territory, money is absolutely no object. Spend whatever you need—just get the railroad there ahead of Joy. Do you understand that?”

  “You say money is no object. Do we have enough money to do that?”

  “I’ll hock everything I have, and everything any of my family or friends have. If we succeed, we’ll be paid back many times over. If we fail, we’ll all be bankrupt, and I might be going to prison for fraud. Understand, this is an all or nothing effort.”

  “Colonel, if you can get me the material on time, I guarantee that I will get your railroad through. I’ll drive the men night and day, rain or shine, drunk or sober.”

  Stevens smiled. “That’s what I want to hear.”

  Tahlequah, Indian Territory

  Marcus Eberwine was a heavy man with large jowls and a protruding lower lip. His skin was whiter than that of the average white man, and he had eyes that were so light a blue that they were nearly without color. His hair was white, not the white of age, but the white of hair that was without color. Because of his pale and porcine appearance, in such contrast to the average resident of the Indian Territory, he stood out wherever he was.

  But even without his distinctive differences, he was a man who would have been noticed because he was one of the wealthiest men in the entire Territory. He owned the Two Feathers Ranch, though as a white man he couldn’t actually own it. He did have it on a fifty-year lease, however. But his main source of income was Eberwine Freight Line, which was the most profitable business in all of the Indian Territory. Eberwine had fifty wagons, and he employed one hundred and fifty men, nearly all of whom were Indians, to run his operation.

  For most of the retail businesses in The Nations, Eberwine Freight was their supply lifeline, though that lifeline came at great expense. Eberwine charged as much to ship the freight as the freight cost, which meant that if a store owner at Fort Gibson ordered a bolt of cotton material for which he paid five dollars, he would have to pay an additional five dollars to Eberwine’s freight line, just to have that bolt transported.

  Eberwine also insisted that the merchants who did business with him sign contracts which included a clause that would allow for as much as a thirty percent “loss in shipment.” This was supposedly due to such things as weather, accidents, and mishandling. In truth, it was merely a way for Eberwine to skim thirty percent off the top of each shipment.

  This morning Eberwine was in his office looking at his ledger when Mr. Deckert, his secretary, came in.

  “Mr. Eberwine, Willie Buck is here to see you. If you would like, I can get rid of him for you.”

  “Why would I want you to do that, Mr. Deckert?”

  “Why? Mr. Eberwine, Willie Buck is little more than a criminal. He has been arrested many times.”

  “And for what? Trying to sell whiskey? That’s not much of a crime now, is it? Anywhere else in the country, selling spirits, or running a saloon is an honorable and profitable pursuit. And the fact that Willie Buck has spent no time in jail shows that, even here, the law tends to turn a blind eye toward that minor violation. Besides, Willie Buck is well connected in the Cherokee nation. We couldn’t even stay in business if we didn’t have people like him in our camp. Show him in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Buck was tall for an Indian, muscular and athletic. Although he had formed the Indian Independence Council as a means to enable him to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the war, he had expanded his ambition. Now, he wanted to unite the different nations in the Indian Territory under his leadership, then withdraw all connections from the United States and form the independent nation of Tahlequah with himself as the leader.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Buck?”

  “I think it’s what we can do for each other,” Buck replied.

  “Oh? And what would that be?”

  “Are you aware that the railroads are getting closer and closer to Indian Territory?”

  “Yeah,” Eberwine said. “I have heard something about it, but I haven’t been paying that much attention to it.”

  “Well, you should be paying attention to it. Right now there are two railroads racing toward the Territory, and the first one to reach the border will be granted the right to take the tracks all the way across Indian Territory, and into Texas. And, they intend to build a settlement every ten miles along the right of way. That would be a settlement of whites. If it reaches the point to where there are more whites in Indian Territory than there are Indians, this land will no longer belong to us.”

  “That won’t be good for you, will it?” Eberwine asked.

  “No, it won’t. But how good will it be for you, if you have to compete with a railroad for your freighting business?”

  “You have a point. Do you also have a solution?”

  “Yes, I have a solution,” Buck offered.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Suppose we made it difficult for them to build the line. Too difficult.”

  “How?”

  “Well, if, say, their building materials would get burned, or if the track they laid one day would be torn up the next, that would make progress difficult, wouldn’t it? What if the graders and track layers were too busy fighting off attacks to construct the railroad? Something like that might make them abandon the project.”

  “How are we going to do that, without having it come right back to us?”

  “Easy,” Buck said. “When we attack the KATY line, we’ll let it be known that we represent the Border Tier Railroad. And when we attack the Border Tier, we’ll be attacking for the KATY line. Pretty soon we’ll have them fighting each other so much that nothing will be built. And the beauty of it is, by that time, we’ll be staying out of it, watching them destroy each other.”

  Eberwine laughed. “Are you sure you are Indian? That plan has all the deviousness of a white man.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve been around enough white men to pick up their evil ways,” Buck replied with a chuckle.

  “All right, let’s do it. We’ll stir the pot, so to speak.”

  Percy Martin was wanted in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. So far he was not wanted in Missouri, Arkansas, or Kansas, and Eberwine was paying him to act as an enforcer among his employees,
and as a collector for debts Eberwine considered overdue.

  He was very careful to have Martin crowd the line toward illegality in his dealings with employees and debtors, but not cross it. As he explained it to Martin when he hired him, “From time to time I shall require certain services that only someone like you can perform. Should that time come, I would want you immediately available, and not in jail somewhere. Therefore, until such time as I need you, I want you to stay out of trouble.”

  When Eberwine began to contemplate Willie Buck’s suggestion of instigating a war between the two competing railroads, Percy Martin was the first name that came to his mind.

  “You sent for me, Mr. Eberwine?” Martin asked, stepping into Eberwine’s office.

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s getting out of line? Who do you want me to straighten out?”

  “It’s not like that this time,” Eberwine said. “This time I’m going to ask you to do something that is very much illegal. But you will be adequately compensated for it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I will pay you well.”

  “How well?”

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  “Damn!” Martin said, his eyes shining in excitement. “Five hundred dollars? Who do you want me to kill?”

  “Nobody. At least, not yet, and not purposely, though some of the things I’m going to ask you to do might result in someone dying. Will that bother you?”

  “For five hundred dollars? Hell no, it doesn’t bother me a bit. That is, as long as I ain’t the one doin’ the dyin’.”

  “Good. I’m sure then that we can do business.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You’re serious? You’re goin’ to give us twenty-five dollars apiece just to pull up this rail?” Evers asked.