Sixkiller, U.S. Marshal

by William W. Johnstone

“No.”

  “Go take a look, Mr. Sixkiller. I think you will be proud.”

  Finishing his biscuit, Sam walked down toward the general store. There were several people—men, women, and children—standing around the front porch looking at whatever it was the sheriff said was displayed there. When John Henry got closer, he drew in a sharp breath of surprise.

  There, in four wooden coffins standing up against the wall, were the bodies of the men who had tried to hold up the train the night before. All four outlaws were shirtless so the bullet holes that killed them could be clearly seen, “Hey, everyone! Here’s the feller that kilt these outlaws!” someone shouted, noticing John Henry looking at the bodies.

  “It’s Marshal Sixkiller!” someone shouted.

  “Three cheers for the marshal!” someone else called. “Hip, hip . . .”

  “Hooray!”

  “Hip, hip . . .”

  “Hooray!”

  “Hip, hip . . .”

  “Hooray!”

  John Henry held up his hand to silence them, then walked up for a closer look at a hand-lettered sign propped up at the foot of the coffins:

  HERE ARE THE BODIES OF FOUR BANDITS

  KILLED BY

  UNITED STATES MARSHAL JOHN HENRY SIXKILLER

  THESE OUTLAWS WERE KILLED

  WHEN THEY TRIED TO ROB A BORDER TIER TRAIN

  The sign and the celebration made John Henry uncomfortable. He didn’t enjoy killing, but it wasn’t something he backed away from. In any life-or-death confrontation, he knew he must be prepared to kill without hesitation, if need be. But it had never been anything that he took pride in.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Tahlequah

  Marcus Eberwine cracked a raw egg, then dropped it into his beer. He swirled it around a couple of times, then drank it down.

  “How can you do that?” Willie Buck asked.

  “It’s good for you,” Eberwine answered.

  “Deckert said you wanted to see me.”

  “Yes.” Eberwine belched. “It seems that John Henry Sixkiller, our own intrepid Indian policeman, chief sheriff, and now United States Marshal has been personally assigned to keep a watch on the progress of the railroads as they approach Indian Territory.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve heard.”

  “I propose that we take advantage of that,” Eberwine said.

  “Pardon me, but you don’t what you are talking about. I can’t imagine anyone in the whole of the Indian Territory less likely to be taken advantage of than John Henry Sixkiller,” Willie Buck said.

  “Oh, we won’t take be taking advantage of him; we will be taking advantage of the situation. This is the way we’ll do it.” Eberwine showed Willie Buck a letter.

  From the office of William Ross,

  President of the Cherokee

  To: Marcus Eberwine

  Mr. Eberwine, it has been approved by the president and Council of the Eastern Cherokee, in session assembled, to accept your generous offer to act as liaison between the Eastern Cherokee and the KATY Railroad, and between the Eastern Cherokee and the Border Tier Railroad, the two companies currently engaged in the effort to be first into Indian Territory.

  This liaison is to be provided without prejudice with regard to the separate railroads until such time as one of the railroads shall succeed in crossing into Indian Territory. At that time, you will represent the president and the council of the Cherokee.

  William Ross

  Chief and President

  Eastern Cherokee

  “What does that mean?” Buck asked.

  “That means that John Henry Sixkiller will be working for me, be he United States Marshal or not. And as soon as the winning railroad enters the territory, he will be required to report to me, for further instructions.”

  “Eberwine, you won’t be able to tell him to stop the construction, or even to slow it down,” Buck said.

  “No, nor is that my intention. We will be monitoring the progress through him, which will give us an inside position on how best to combat it.”

  “How will that work?”

  “Just leave that to me,” Eberwine said. “Oh, and from here on, I think it would not be good for us to be seen together. After all, you are chairman of the Indian Independence Council and you will be fighting against the construction until the United States grants the independence of the new nation of Sequoyah. And because of my involvement with the railroad, I will be able to tell you where your attacks will be most effective.”

  Buck smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that is a very good idea. It’s like I always say, Eberwine. You are a very smart man.”

  Eberwine poured a beer for Buck, then refreshed his own. He held his glass out in a toast. “I like to think so,” he said.

  “How soon do I start?”

  “As soon as I learn which railroad will be our most likely target,” Eberwine said.

  As Eberwine and Willie Buck were discussing the tactics they would use to stop the railroad, Colonel Stevens was in Emporia, holding a conference with his chief officers.

  “I want a work train made up right away. Put my private car on it, right behind the engine and tender. Load the train with as much building material as you can get on it, and let’s move everything to end of track.”

  “All right, Boss,” Gunn said.

  “We are going to be the first railroad into Indian Territory, come hell or high water. The success or failure of this operation will be determined in the next two weeks. Millions of dollars are at stake. Millions.”

  “I’ll get the train loaded right away,” Gunn promised.

  Despite Gunn’s promise of “right away,” it took twenty-four hours to load the train with rails, cross ties, bridge timbers, spikes, and fishplates. When the train was loaded, and Stevens’s private car, which was named the Prairie Queen, was attached, they got underway.

  The length of the train, and the heavy load it was carrying, meant that it could barely manage a speed of ten miles per hour. Because of that, it took nine hours to get from Emporia to Humboldt. There, the train was pulled off to a siding where it spent the night. The next day, the train passed through Cherryvale, and thirty miles beyond to the end of track.

  It was raining when the train reached the end of track, and not just a gentle rain. The rain was coming down in torrents, with streams of water rushing alongside the track.

  “Colonel, when you said come hell or high water, you weren’t kidding,” Gunn said. “Here’s the high water for you. It’s raining hard enough to drown frogs.”

  “That may be so, Otis, but we aren’t frogs,” Stevens said. “Let’s get out and see what’s going on.”

  Donning slickers and a poncho, Colonel Stevens and Otis Gunn stepped down from the Prairie Queen to have a look at where things stood.

  “There’s nobody working,” Stevens said, obviously upset by the fact. “Where the hell is everybody?”

  “I imagine they are staying out of the rain,” Gunn said.

  “Why? They aren’t made of sugar. They aren’t going to melt.”

  Walking a hundred feet or so beyond the end of track, Stevens saw that a very large bridge was resting on timbers standing in a creek. The bridge was not yet secured, even though it was raining hard, and the creek was rising.

  “Look at that!” Stevens said, pointing toward the bridge. “Damn it! That bridge isn’t secured and the water is running faster than bloody hell! It’s going to push the bridge off the pilings!”

  Even as he was talking, some of the top tier of the timbers worked loose, then started floating rapidly downstream.

  “We’ve got to stop that! If we lose that bridge, it’ll cost us several days!”

  John Scullin, upon seeing the train arrive, now came up to greet Stevens.

  “Colonel, we weren’t expecting you here today.”

  “Obviously not,” Stevens said, showing his displeasure. He pointed to the bridge. “We are about to lose that bridge, and not one man is
out here working. Not one!”

  “Colonel, you can’t expect the men to work in conditions like this.”

  “I can expect them, and I do expect them. Where are they? And please don’t tell me they’ve gone back to Humboldt.”

  “No, sir, they’re here. Every one of them,” Scullin said. He pointed to four rather substantial tents. “They’re all inside the tents, out of the rain.”

  Stevens started toward the tents, splashing through the mud puddles, some of which were knee deep. As Scullin had said, all of the workmen had taken shelter from the rain, and they were in tents, playing cards, talking, and napping. No one was working.

  “What are you men doing in here?” Stevens shouted. “Why aren’t you working?”

  “Colonel, it’s rainin’ too hard,” one of the men said. “You can’t work in rain like this.”

  “Who says you can’t? You have to!” Stevens pointed to the bridge. “Don’t you understand that if you don’t get this bridge secured it can wash away? If we lose that bridge, it’ll take nearly a week to get it put back again.”

  “That’s a possibility,” one of the men said. “But, Colonel, what can we do about it? Especially in weather like this.”

  “I have hired the best engineer and the best construction foremen in the business. And they are here with you. I’m sure that, under their direction, you can find some way to secure that bridge. I am so sure of it, that I will give a twenty-dollar bonus to anyone who will work until this bridge is secured.”

  “Twenty dollars?” one of the men called back.

  “Yes, twenty dollars, and you won’t have to wait until the next payday to get your money. I’ll give it to you as soon as the bridge is secured.”

  “I don’t know about the rest of these folks, Colonel, but you got me,” one of the men said as he began putting on his poncho.

  “Me, too. Twenty dollars is a lot of money.”

  “Hell, Lee Roy, you’ll just spend it on whiskey and women,” another called.

  “Well, can you think of anything better to spend it on?” Lee Roy replied, to the laughter of the others.

  Within five minutes, twenty-five men had agreed to the offer, and they came out of the tents, grabbed their tools, and headed for the bridge. If they were harboring any hope for the rain to ease up, it was a false hope, for the rain increased in intensity.

  The men began working in almost impossible conditions. They would get a timber in place, but before they could secure it, it would wash away in a swirling pool, sometimes taking one or more of the men with it. One of the workers was knocked out when a heavy timber hit him in the head, and he started floating away, belly down, face underwater. It was Scullin who saved him from drowning, racing after him, picking him up from the water, and to the cheers of the others, throwing him across his shoulder to bring him back to safety.

  Another man got a broken arm, and several others received painful bruises and cuts, but the men did not stop working. They toiled in a constant downpour, working by lanterns once it grew dark, even though the rain was falling so hard that it was difficult to keep the lanterns lit, even with the storm shutters. Finally, at midnight, both Scullin and Gunn inspected the bridge and declared that it was secure and sound. It was a tired crew that turned in that night but, by seven o’clock the next morning, the crew was at work again. Thankfully, the rain had stopped, though the way that had been prepared for the tracks was under water, and much of the grading had washed away.

  Compared to the Herculean effort of the night before, though, laying the tracks up to, and across the bridge, seemed almost child’s play. By four o’clock in the afternoon, the tracks crossed the bridge, and were laid for a thousand feet beyond. It was now time to test the bridge.

  “We’ll run the train across as soon as we unload it,” Gunn said.

  “Why are you going to unload it?” Scullin asked.

  “Why, to lighten the load, of course.”

  Scullin shook his head. “We’re goin’ to need the material to go on from here, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then I see no reason to lighten the load. We’re goin’ to need the material, and we need to know if the bridge is going to hold up. If it will hold up for this load, it will hold up for anything.”

  “I don’t know,” Gunn said. “That seems like quite a risk to me. If the bridge collapses under the load, we’ll have a wrecked train and scattered material that might take two weeks or longer to clean up.”

  “I think the bridge will hold up.”

  “John, how confident are you that the bridge will hold up?” Stevens asked. “The reason I ask is, Otis is right. If the bridge collapses under the load, I am ruined. It won’t make any difference if it is two days or two weeks, the KATY won’t recover.”

  “Colonel, I’ll tell you how confident I am. I’ll ride up on the boiler,” Scullin said. “If the bridge gives way, and the engine crashes, that boiler is going to explode and I’ll be a cooked goose.”

  “You are that sure of it, are you?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  Stevens chuckled. “Well, you don’t have to ride on the boiler. Let’s just cross our fingers and send it across.”

  Scullin smiled broadly. “Yes, sir!”

  Anxiously, all the workers gathered around to watch the train start across the bridge.

  “I think they ought to offload it first,” one of the men said.

  “Why, don’t you have confidence in your work?”

  “Well, yeah, except, maybe you didn’t notice but we wasn’t exactly workin’ under the best of conditions last night. In fact, I don’t think there’s ever been any worse conditions. Who knows how good of a job we done? Besides which, I ain’t never seen a train as heavy loaded as this here train is.”

  “I say it’ll make it across, no problem.”

  “You willin’ to ride on the engine as it crosses, are you?”

  “I’m willin’ to lay money that it makes it across. Are you?”

  “Yeah, I’ll put some money on it. I bet five dollars the bridge falls in.”

  “You’re on.”

  “Wait a minute, I want some of that action,” someone else called.

  “Yeah, me, too,” another said.

  Over the next few moments, several hundred dollars were bet on whether or not the train would be able to cross the bridge without the bridge collapsing under its weight.

  The fireman climbed into the engine and built the fire. It took about half an hour to get the steam up, and Stevens, Scullin, Gunn, and everyone there stood around the engine as it came alive, listening to the water gurgling in the boiler. The fireman stuck his head out of the window of the locomotive and called down to the engineer.

  “Steam’s up, Doodle. If we’re going to drive this train across the bridge, now is the time to do it.”

  “Here goes, boys,” Doodle said as he started toward the locomotive cabin.

  “Doodle, wait,” Scullin said to the engineer. “If you don’t feel comfortable taking it across, you can stay here. Gordon, you can climb down from the cab, too. I know how to drive the thing. I’ll take it across.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Scullin, but I’m the engineer,” Doodle said. “I reckon this is my job. I don’t need you though, Gordon,” Doodle said to his fireman. “You got enough steam up to get across.”

  “I ain’t climbin’ down,” Gordon said. “Like you said, this is my job.”

  “Wait a minute before you start across, Doodle,” Stevens called up to him. “I’ll be in my car. I’m going across, too.”

  “You got room for me in that car?” Scullin asked.

  “I sure do,” Stevens replied with a smile.

  “I’m going, too,” Gunn said, and the three men climbed up into the Prairie Queen.

  “Hell, I ain’t goin’ to be left behind!” one of the workers said, and he climbed up onto one of the loaded flatcars. At least a dozen others joined him.

  Doodle had gained th
e cabin by now, and he leaned out of the window and looked back along the train until all the boarding activity was completed and the train was clear. He blew the whistle, then opened the throttle, and with loud puffs of gushing steam, the connecting rod turned the driver wheels and, slowly, the train started toward the bridge. The workmen gathered around the bridge on both sides of the creek, watching as the train approached.

  “She’s on it!” someone shouted, though the shout wasn’t necessary—everyone could see that the engine had eased out onto the bridge. It rolled across and anxious eyes studied the bridges and the timbers for any unwanted activity.

  The bridge held solid as the train rolled across. Once the last car had cleared the bridge, Doodle began blowing the whistle, and the workers sent up a mighty cheer. Everyone cheered, even those who had lost money on the bets, but those who won the bets cheered the loudest.

  In Stevens’s private car, he poured three glasses of whiskey, then held his glass up, joined by the others. They drank a toast, then Stevens pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time.

  “We crossed the last major obstacle at four—oh—three p.m.,” he said. “Gentleman, I have never felt more confident than now that we will be the first railroad across the border.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  John Henry was sent back down into Indian Territory to meet with Marcus Eberwine. According to Marshal Sarber, who had given John Henry his assignment, Eberwine had been appointed by the Cherokee Council to be the chief liaison between the Indians and whichever railroad won the race to come into Indian Territory.

  If it had been up to John Henry, Eberwine would not have received the appointment. John Henry knew who Eberwine was. He was a businessman who employed a lot of Indians, and because of that, he had a lot of people depending on him for their living. But John Henry was absolutely certain that Eberwine took advantage of his position of power within the Cherokee nation by charging such exorbitant prices on goods that he brought in by his freight wagons.