The Branch and the Scaffold

by The Branch

  “In that case, you pay him.”

  “It don’t work that way. It happened on your property. That makes you responsible. Is this how you handle things in the Kee-too-wah?”

  “Talk American. A white man talking Cherokee makes me puke.”

  “Cherokee’s American, Ned. It don’t get more American than that.”

  Liquid gurgled. Maples shifted his position to put the sun out of his eyes. Black and purple floaters obscured the outlines of the men seated on the porch.

  “It’s two dollars, Ned. You want to make a federal case?”

  Christie barked. It was a close approximation of a dog. Out hunting, he could swindle a turkey with his gobble and an elk when he snorted. “That’s right, Dan. I want to make a federal case. Why don’t you step up here and take me back to Fort Smith and dandle me from Parker’s tears because my neighbor’s got to shinny up trees by himself from here on?”

  Parris laughed, a high-pitched alcoholic giggle that sent snakes up the deputy’s back. He thought if he could get Christie away from his companion he could make him see reason. A man wanted to appear tall to his friends.

  Maples wound the reins he was holding around his wrist. “Let’s go to your neighbor’s place, just you and me. We’ll all sit down and come to an understanding.”

  Flame spurted from the porch. Maples’ horse swung its head, dragging him off balance. He heard the shot and right behind it a branch cracking not far from him. He raked out his big Colt from instinct. He saw flame again, but didn’t hear the shot or anything else until his horse stopped dragging him and he lay on his back in the dirt and heard the noise the crickets made as dusk settled, fading.

  Thomas Boles was the United States marshal in Fort Smith in 1885. Balding, with a graying beard that rivaled George Male-don’s for length if not for bristle, he’d served as a judge in Arkansas, been elected twice to Congress, run the land office in Dardanelle for President Hayes, and been appointed to his current position by President Arthur. Those who knew him for his many kindnesses called him Uncle Tom. Others, impressed by his bearing, referred to him—always among themselves, never to his face—as the Old Roman. He was forty-eight and inclined to be sanguine, but when he read the telegram from the Cherokee police in Tahlequah, he shouted for his secretary, and when the young man presented himself handed him the wire and told him to get it to Judge Parker right away.

  “Sir, court’s in session.”

  “I know that. Did you think I thought it was Sunday?”

  “The judge—”

  “He won’t thank you for waiting until he adjourns. Give it to the bailiff and tell him to deliver it to the bench at once. Then come back here with the deputy roster. I want the name of every man on duty in the Cherokee Nation.”

  The secretary left, shaken by the emotion in the marshal’s voice.

  Parker was trying a case of rape. He scowled when the bailiff hurried up the aisle and stuck the yellow flimsy under his nose. The victim, testifying in a voice barely audible, faltered and fell silent. The reporter covering the trial for the Elevator noted that the man seated behind the big cherry desk, gray now of hair and beard, drew his face taut as he read. His hand found his gavel. He declared a recess of fifteen minutes and was on his way to the door when the other men and women in the room were still rising at Crier Hammersly’s command.

  The judge entered Boles’s office in his robes and found the marshal studying a closely type-written list of names with his secretary standing over him.

  “Is it true?” Parker asked. “Is it confirmed?”

  Boles nodded his great round head. “I know the man who sent the wire. I thought I knew Christie, too, at least by reputation. He’s been a credit to his tribe his whole life.”

  “His whole life is behind him. What about this man Parris?”

  “I don’t know him.” Boles handed the sheet to his secretary. “Wire Tahlequah. Tell them to locate the men whose names I’ve checked and send them out to Going Snake. Start there and turn over every rock west of Fort Smith. If they don’t know Parris, they’re to be accompanied by someone who can identify him.”

  “What about Christie?” the young man asked.

  “Everyone in the Cherokee knows Christie by sight. Go.”

  The secretary left. Parker asked the marshal the names of the deputies he’d selected.

  “John Curtis, Joe Bowers, and John Fields. All good men, and they speak the lingo.”

  “Maples should have arrested both of them when he caught them drinking whiskey.”

  “If my deputies did that every time they saw it, there wouldn’t be any room in the jail for murderers and rapists. The charge is a bargaining chip, to get information. Beyond that I won’t comment. These men have to deal directly with the natives every day.”

  “Keep me informed. I don’t care if I’m in the middle of pronouncing sentence.”

  Boles agreed. There were tears in Parker’s eyes.

  “I know Nancy Shell,” Deputy Fields said. “I’ve bought a bottle or two from her myself, purely in the interest of criminal investigation.”

  Deputy Curtis didn’t laugh. He’d been first on the scene after the killing and had pressed his ear against Dan Maples’ cold breast. Inside the cabin he’d found Christie’s wife with her children gathered around her like pickets, and had known before he asked his question what the answer would be. It was a waste of time trying to batter down that Indian barrier once it was in place.

  He said, “Parris buys his whiskey there, when he’s got the price. If I was him I’d run there if I couldn’t run home.”

  “I’d feel better Bowers was along.”

  “He’s with Chief Bushyhead, in case Christie takes it in his head to go back and get the Kee-too-wah on his side.”

  They crossed Spring Creek. Fields said, “Right around here’s where Jim Wilkinson put the irons on that nigger Diggs. Parker’s friends are few here.”

  “Well, let’s see if we can cut down on the enemies.”

  Nancy Shell received them in her parlor. She was some part Cherokee and several parts other things, with blue eyes in a round flat face, and her house was the same. Indian rugs and pots shared space with porcelain lamps, pictures in oval frames, and what had to be the only daisy-horn phonograph between Fort Smith and Texas. She got up from her rocking chair from time to time to change the cylinder, but it always seemed to be the same tin tenor singing the same song in Italian. The presence of two tall marshals in striped suits and weaponry made no impression on her features. She’d offered them whiskey, but they’d declined. She rolled a cigarette as they spoke, concentrating on getting the flakes of tobacco arranged evenly and sliding a sharp tongue tip along the edge of the paper. She lit it, blew smoke out her nostrils, and said, “John.”

  She hadn’t raised her voice, but the curtains stirred in a doorway and a man ducked his head to clear the frame. He wasn’t as tall as Christie, but he was on a level with the lawmen, and he appeared to be unarmed.

  “Good morning, John,” Fields said.

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Sure you do. Last time I seen you here I said I’d arrest you next time.”

  “I ain’t had a drop. Ain’t got the price.”

  “Well, things have changed. We’re arresting you for the murder of Dan Maples. You’re to answer for him in Fort Smith, or here if that’s your choice.” Fields drew his Colt.

  Parris turned to run. Curtis, quicker to act than his partner, scooped out his Colt and slammed the barrel across the back of Parris’ head. When he hit the floor, the phonograph needle scratched the cylinder.

  “You boys want to wrassle, do it outside,” Nancy Shell said. “I keep an orderly house.”

  Curtis got a grip on the unconscious man’s collar, dragged him across the floor and down the steps of the porch, and dumped him into the burned-out yard, where he kicked him in the ribs until he came to and tried to roll himself up into a ball. Curtis caught him on the forehead with a heel and
he jerked out straight on his back. Fields stood on the porch and lit a cigar.

  “Easy on his head,” he said, tossing away the match. “Maledon needs it to keep the rope from slipping off.”

  Curtis went around behind the cabin and came back hauling a bucket slopping water over the top. He slung its contents over the man on the ground. Parris spluttered, cursed in English and Cherokee, and sat up, his hair plastered over his eyes. Fields left the porch, slid his Whitney shotgun from its scabbard on his saddle, and threw it to Curtis. When Parris parted his hair like a curtain, both muzzles hovered six inches away. Curtis palmed back the hammers with a crunch.

  “I didn’t shoot him!” Parris shrieked. “It was Ned.”

  SEVEN

  Ned Christie couldn’t believe his luck; so he waited.

  He’d beaten his way through heavy underbrush, crossed a field, and torn a hole in the knee of his trousers climbing over a fence in the dark to approach his gunsmith’s shop from behind, to find no light in the windows and no signs of occupancy inside. The marshals were too smart—many of them, anyway—to give away their presence by striking a match, but he had a hunter’s sense about such things and felt strongly in his heart that no trap awaited him. But he’d learned about the world outside the tribe in the mission school and placed his faith in things other than his instincts. Civilized man was a trickster and could not be trusted to behave according to the laws of the spirit. He had no soul, and therefore no scent. A place that contained him was as one empty.

  And so he waited, on his belly like the spreading adder, sent to kill Sister Sun before she could annihilate the People for grimacing when they looked at her. This was a story his father knew and believed, and although Ned had been spoiled against it and all the others, he thought often in their terms. Watt Christie’s simple faith and the travesty in Tahlequah, where the Cherokee raised points of order and recognized speakers from the floor and comported themselves like little white men, had made of his son a mixed thing, part Indian, part snake.

  After some little time, measured in shades of darkness, Ned Christie rose and crept forward, drawing his only weapon, one of the revolvers he’d taken home to test in his other life, with two cartridges unfired. That was good if there were no more than two marshals, better if there was but one. He did not want to kill marshals. The second bullet would free him from his anguish.

  The shop was deserted, he found when he broke the lock on the back door and no fire came from the darkness. Sheathing the revolver under his waistband, he moved surely in the gloom, feeling for the long guns in their rack, the assorted pistols and revolvers in their drawers, and the boxes of ammunition on the shelves, which he placed on the woven rug on the floor and tied into a bundle with his belt. He moved swiftly and noiselessly. With the bundle cradled in one arm he turned to leave, then remembered the bottle of Old Pepper he kept under the counter for days when business was slow. He was sober. His head timpanned from the late effects of trade whiskey consumed hours before. He moved aside the blanket that covered the door to the front of the shop—and snatched the revolver from his trousers. He smelled a man.

  “Do not shoot.”

  The words were Cherokee.

  Watt Christie watched his son tip up the bottle with the strange characters printed on the label. He himself had no taste for liquor and resented the universal notion that all Indians were born drunks, with a raging thirst for whiskey and no tolerance for its effects. It hurt him to see Ned undermining his argument. He was proud of his son’s accomplishments, but he prayed each night to the old gods to free him from his persistent devil.

  They sat in chairs near the cold stove in the front of the shop with the shades drawn and a coal-oil lantern turned very low on the floor at their feet. The orange glimmer left their upper halves in shadow, but kept Watt’s despair from worming into his vitals. Ned made no protest. For him the whiskey seemed to produce the same result.

  “I knew I would find you here.” Watt spoke in Cherokee; English was one puzzle that eluded his wisdom. “I taught you never to go into the brush without a rifle. You never know when supper might present itself.”

  Ned said nothing. Clothing rustled. Whiskey gurgled.

  “It is all over the Nation. Parris told the marshals you shot Dan Maples.”

  “I did not.” Ned answered him in the same tongue. “John shot the dog and Maples, and he would have shot my neighbor too if the jug was not more handy.”

  “You must go to the Kee-too-wah and tell them this. They will see you to Fort Smith, where your version may be told. They say Parker is a fair man, sympathetic to the People.”

  “So much so that he has hanged thirteen of us in ten years.”

  “He has hanged more of Them than he has of us. It was not always so. You are too young to remember.”

  “I remember when you could buy your own warrant from a marshal for twenty dollars American. There is much to be said for the way it was.”

  “This is not my son I hear.”

  “You are deceived. We only have friends in Fort Smith until one of them is killed by one of us. They do not ask who. Any Cherokee will answer. I will not spend months in that shithole prison only to have my neck wrung like a turkey. If they take me I will not have even that choice. They beat John half to death to get that lie out of him, and they will beat me the other half. It is a hundred miles to Fort Smith and hell. I will not give them that choice. I will die here where I was born, with a rifle in my hand.”

  “Who will look after your wife and children?”

  “The tribe will take care of them. Remember, I helped write that law.”

  “It is a good law. The white man has none like it.” Watt took in air to the base of his lungs, then expelled it. “It seems years since you sat in town and made law.”

  “The white man’s law ends where death begins. He believes in nothing thereafter, not even his angels and jabbery. He poisons everything he touches and calls it bread.”

  “You forget that it is a Cherokee who brought you to this pass.”

  “John Parris never liked me. He set himself out to make me as bad as him, and I fell in like the fool I am. Parker’s marshals are not fools, but they chose him over me. There is no justice there. Even their tongue is twisted. From this day forth I will speak it no more.”

  “That is an unwise choice. The tongue of our ancestors is written on water. It will be forgotten in your lifetime.”

  “You overestimate my span. I will be dead before you sprout your next white whisker. But before then, they will know I lived.”

  “What can one man do against so many?”

  “Others feel as I do. We will strike in number and then trickle away through the woods as water.”

  Watt wiped his eyes. “You say you are not a killer and yet you speak as one.”

  “I intend to break each of the laws I helped write. But upon your head I promise I will take no life unless mine is threatened. I will not shoot to kill, even if the man in my sights is a marshal.”

  “Where will you go?”

  Ned drank. “Why? So you can tell your friends in Fort Smith?”

  “That is unkind.”

  Here the translation falls far short of the original. The Cherokee language has relatively few syllables, but the arrangement is everything.

  “I spoke rashly,” Ned said then. “I am angry at myself. I became bewitched by the sweet scent of my own armpits and presumed to walk with my betters. I scaled a ladder like a squirrel thinking himself a man. The squirrel does not own the ladder. The man snatched it away. The squirrel fell to earth.”

  “My counsel now is worthless.” Watt Christie unbuttoned his shirt, exposing a canvas money belt cinched around his middle. He unbuckled it and leaned forward to lay it in his son’s lap. “That is every cent I have. Spend it on food, not whiskey. A man who has declared war upon the United States must keep his wits about him.”

  “I will steal what I need and slay what I eat.” Ned lifted the belt and
held it out.

  Watt shook his head. “You are not as good a hunter as you think.”

  Which statement gave his son his first chuckle in many hours.

  Deputy Joe Bowers, having satisfied himself that Chief Dennis Bushyhead and the Cherokee national council would not assist one of their own to evade the law, rode out to Ned Christie’s cabin to serve the murder warrant. He did not expect to find him at home, but knew he would be lurking somewhere inside Rabbit Trap, which was a good name for a canyon that the closer a man rode to its tangled wilderness the more it looked like a place the smallest rodent could not penetrate. Yet the Cherokee had hunted it for generations, and those who had gone into private illegal enterprise had carried in their equipment piece by piece and assembled whiskey stills in clearings in the brush that had to be beaten back every few weeks to keep the forest from reclaiming lost ground. It was no place for a white man to go after dark, particularly on Parker’s business, and so he’d spent the night in Tahlequah while Fields and Curtis interviewed John Parris at Nancy Shell’s. In the morning, after two cups of coffee and a plate of biscuits larded with gravy—a delicacy he found best to his liking in the Nations and nowhere else—he crossed into Going Snake.

  The other two deputies had advised him to wait for them, but Bowers knew Christie for a reasonable man who would go quietly to Fort Smith to clear up what he himself was convinced was a misunderstanding. Even Christie’s political opponents attested to his loyalty to the rule of law. Bowers blamed drink—the universal plague in that territory—and some kind of mix-up that Parker would set right.

  He found Christie’s wife, fine-featured for a full-blood with enormous mahogany-colored eyes, sewing a patch onto a pair of her husband’s canvas trousers in their parlor, with a bone needle and a sailor’s palm on her hand; the honey locust thorns and shagbark hickory played hell with the toughest and coarsest-woven fabric—and forgetting her English when he asked where Ned was and when she expected him back. He knew a smattering of Cherokee, enough anyway to ask the same questions, but not enough to sort anything out of the rapid-fire responses she knew damn well were too much for him. Leave it to a woman to find a way to cooperate with an officer of the court and flummox him at one and the same time. He admired her, and by extension Christie; he’d never known a woman who’d pay him half the respect she paid her man. It said a great deal about the man. Very soon he’d regret such carelessness, and continue to do so every time it rained or snowed for the rest of his life.