“Ah, here it is.” Biggers rose, turned, and slid the yellow envelope across the desk. “This came for you the day before yesterday.”
The last thing Daniel expected was a telegram. Especially one from William J. Kyne less than a week since they had left Fort Worth.
THINGS ABOUT TO BOIL OVER HERE STOP CARMODY HAS NO NEED FOR COMANCHE GRASS STOP LEASES WITH CHEROKEE FOR HIS HERDS STOP TELLS ASSN HE WILL SELL HIS COMANCHE LEASE STOP NOW WE KNOW REASON STOP BLACKMAIL STOP HAVE YOU TALKED TO CHRISTENSEN YET STOP
“I trust this is not bad news, Sergeant.”
Daniel shook his head. Not bad news, but what did it mean? If what Kyne said was true, blackmail was an obvious deduction. Sol Carmody had bought rights for a full year to lease The Big Pasture for $250. The Northern Texas Stock Growers’ Association had offered … what? Daniel wished he had his Old Glory tablet with him to check. His memory said it had been $17,000, $18,000 … no, $19,000 or thereabouts.
“Christ Almighty!” Immediately he felt shamed. He looked up, saw the ashen look on Joshua Biggers’s face, and apologized for taking the Lord’s name in vain. For breaking one of the Ten Commandments back in Carlisle, the School Mothers would have pounded his knuckles with their rulers until he bled.
He studied the wire.
The People would get $250 under the agreement Isa-tai had signed with Carmody. That Tejano would net $19,000. Men, women, and children—red, white, all colors—had been murdered for a much smaller sum than that. Carmody would have a big reason to silence any protest from Quanah, or Yellow Bear.
He shoved the telegram into his vest pocket, and looked back at the agent. “Before we left for Fort Worth, you were brought a paper. An agreement to lease The Big Pasture. Signed by Isa-tai.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Do you still have it? May I see it?”
Biggers returned to the drawer. A minute later, Daniel had stepped into the doorway for better light.
* * * * *
To who this konserns
this leter is a agrement Btwen Sol Carmody, Elm Fork of trenety Rver, Tex, and Kiyota Dropins, reeprezentin the Comanch nation
in xchang for $250 per anum, the Comanch nation aagres 2 let “The biG pastir” to the S-C∆, Ω5, ††† and .45-70 brands—all regestred Dallas, Tex, Sol Carmody OwNer.
no Othr Brands wil be allwed 2 Share grazin leese withot Carmodys apruval
This leter is Legaly bindin 2 all parteys.
Signed on this 12th day off jewLie in year of our Lourd 18 and 88
Solomon R. Carmody
X [Kiyota Dropins]
Witnesd by
V. Christensen
X [Tony johnsoN]
George McEveety
* * * * *
Daniel reread the letter. Carmody’s segundo, Vince Christensen, had been one of the witnesses. He didn’t know any Tony Johnson, but suspected that he could be found riding for one of Carmody’s brands. George McEveety’s signature, however, surprised him. Maybe that would give the document more of a legal standing in the pale-eyes courts. Daniel just didn’t know.
“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I, Sergeant?”
Shaking his head, Daniel returned the letter to Joshua Biggers. That was something new. Previous agents would have told Daniel to shut up, warning him that this was none of his affair, and that the letter was legal, valid, and nonnegotiable.
“The handwriting is atrocious, the spelling a comedy of errors,” Biggers said. “Immediately I took it to the trading post, and Mister McEveety confirmed that he had signed it. I found Charles, and asked him to take me to see his father, just to make sure. I knew Quanah had something in mind for The Big Pasture, but Isa-tai himself said he signed it. I decided that if anything were wrong, Quanah would let me know, take it directly to the colonel at Fort Sill, or, knowing Quanah’s connections, all the way to Washington City. I guess I should have asked you about it, Sergeant.”
Daniel shook his head, thinking: No, I should have asked Ben Buffalo Bone.
“I will speak to Mister McEveety about this,” Daniel said. “Thank you, Reverend Biggers.”
* * * * *
Once the trading post had been a brilliant red building that stood out on the prairie for miles, but an unrelenting sun and constant wind had faded the paint to more pink than red, and dust and dirt made it look more brown than pink. Still, by reservation standards, it remained impressive—a two-story building of wood planks with a fancy façade and plenty of windows on the top floor. The awning over the front porch sagged a little, as did the porch, and one of the steps was missing, and chickens squawked and pecked in the coyote-fenced coop to the side. Two Kiowa women sat cross-legged in the shade by the door, and a burly black man stood on the other side of the porch, broom in one hand, cigarette in the other. Dogs yipped as Daniel rode up, but it was too hot to be barking, so the ugly, bone-thin mongrels quickly retired under the porch, growling steadily to inform the newcomer that they weren’t too tuckered out to take a chunk out of his leg if provoked.
Daniel expected to find George McEveety upstairs, where he lived in a small room in the back—the rest of the floor a warehouse, stockroom, something like that. Rumors around Fort Sill said the upstairs were also used for something more stimulating than the chicory he sold, but less sanitary. Instead of sweating in his quarters, the gray-bearded merchant sat on an overturned barrel, fanning himself with a newspaper, and slaking his thirst with a bottle of root beer.
“Well, if it ain’t Gen’ral Metal Shirt hisself,” McEveety said. “Step off your high horse, Killstraight.” He held out the bottle. “Want some firewater, chief?”
The Negro exhaled smoke as he laughed at his boss’s joke.
After swinging from his horse, Daniel wrapped the hackamore around the hitching rail, carefully climbed the steps, and greeted the two stone-faced Kiowa women who ignored him.
He stopped and leaned against a sun-rotted column, as much as he dared, and looked through the open door to see Charles Flint showing off a bolt of yellow calico to one of Twice Bent Nose’s daughters. When he returned his attention to George McEveety, the trader was gulping down the rest of his root beer, and had stuffed the newspaper into a knothole. His face was pasty, hair matted with sweat, and the armpits of his shirt were dark and stained. From where Daniel stood, he could smell McEveety’s stink.
“I wish to ask you some questions, Mister McEveety,” he said.
With a burp, McEveety leaned forward on his makeshift chair and pitched the empty bottle over the porch railing. “If it’s them Old Glory writin’ books you want, I still don’t carry none. Ream paper and envelopes. That’s all I got, and not much of them. Not much of a market, or a profit, for writin’ when most of the customers is ignorant savages. Ain’t that right, Buck?”
The black man laughed again.
“This is about an agreement you witnessed for the Texas rancher named Carmody.”
McEveety’s smile vanished instantly, and he shot from his chair. “Don’t you …” He stopped, turning, half smiling as Twice Bent Nose’s daughter—Daniel couldn’t recollect her name—passed through the door, holding three yards of the calico in her hand. She sang out a hello to Daniel, bid the merchant and his helper good day, but did not speak to the two Kiowa women.
No one spoke until she was out of earshot.
The merchant waved a railroad spike of a finger in Daniel’s face. “That tin shield don’t give you no right to question me, boy. I might call you a white Comanch’, but you ain’t no white man. Best know your place, Killstraight. Don’t get uppity like some Yankee nigger. I tol’ that Bible-thumper I signed it, and I signed it. That’s the end of the story, boy. End of the story.”
Buck, the black man, no longer laughed.
Daniel met McEveety’s glare for ten full seconds. No one spoke. Even the dogs had quit growling. Footsteps on the hardwood floors turned his attention to the doorway, and there stood Charles Flint, wearing sleeve garters and wiping ink off h
is fingers with a handkerchief.
Suddenly Daniel remembered, and he couldn’t help but stare at the bookkeeper’s hands. The ink, he found with relief, was black. Flint shoved the handkerchief into the pocket of his trousers, and said, “If it’s referring to that letter my father signed, Daniel, I can answer any questions.”
“That’s right,” McEveety said. “You two bucks hash things out. I got a store to run.” He spit between the cracks in the porch, and stormed inside.
The black man stepped off the porch, and walked around the post. The Kiowa women remained silent.
“You never mentioned this in Fort Worth,” Daniel said after a long silence.
Flint sighed. “I did not think it was important. My father said he signed the paper. The rancher also said so.” He shrugged, and leaned against the door frame. “I am sorry, bávi. I did not know this was important. I am no detective. I am a bookkeeper.”
It was Daniel’s turn to sigh. He crossed the porch until he found a comfortable, shadier spot on the wall to lean on. “It is not important,” he told Flint. “I just wonder why he”—motioning inside the store toward McEveety—“would witness it.”
“He is a white man. A man of property. People would not question his word.”
Daniel wasn’t quite so sure about that. George McEveety was not Lee Hall or Burk Burnett. Still, he nodded as if in agreement with Flint. “This Carmody,” Daniel said. “I have not seen him on our land before. Did he know McEveety? Has he traded here before?”
Flint shook his head. “The only time I ever saw the Tejano was in Fort Worth at the restaurant. I swear this is true.” His eyes said he wasn’t lying, and Daniel felt remorse for having doubted another Nermernuh, no matter who his father happened to be.
“Your father signed the agreement?”
“Haa. This he has never denied. You know that as well as I do. When Agent Biggers brought the agreement to the post, Mister McEveety said he had signed it, and then we took it to my father. He said the words were what he and Carmody agreed to.”
“The other witnesses,” Daniel continued. “Vince Christensen works for Carmody. The other is someone named Tony Johnson. Do you know them? Have they ever … ?”
“Their names mean nothing, bávi. But that does not mean I have never seen them here or anywhere.”
Hoofs clopped down the road, but Daniel ignored them. He stood there, staring at his moccasins, trying to decide where he should go next. Well, that seemed obvious.
“I must go back to Fort Sill,” he said.
“Why?”
“To send a telegram to Hugh Gunter.” Stupid. He should have thought about that before leaving the agency, after Biggers had shown him the wire from Kyne. It was out of the way, but Deputy Marshal Harvey Noble had taught Daniel not to believe everything you read. He would need to confirm with Gunter that Carmody did lease Cherokee range. “Then I must find this Vince Christensen. He was in Fort Worth, near the hotel, the night …” He stopped short.
“I hope both help you better than I have done, bávi. I am sorry to have failed you.”
Daniel looked up, started to tell Flint that he was not to blame, but the bookkeeper was gazing at the steps, a smile replacing his frown, and that’s when Daniel heard the giggling of girls’ voices. He straightened, turned, and saw Oajuicauojué’s laughing face as she slid off her pony, and climbed the steps. Behind her strode her older sister, Rain Shower.
“We have come to trade,” Oajuicauojué announced. She treated Daniel to a coquettish grin, and slipped inside the door.
“I must go,” Flint said, and followed.
Rain Shower passed through the threshold without a word, without a glance at Daniel.
Angrily Daniel stormed off the porch, swung into the saddle, and kicked his buckskin mare into a gallop.
Chapter Twenty
When he reached The Big Pasture the following morning, his heart felt lighter, and he regretted his jealousy. He should not be angry at Rain Shower, or at Tetecae. This land, perhaps the most holy that belonged to The People, often affected him so. It made him happy, let him forget whatever troubled him.
Surrounding The Big Pasture, the Wichita Mountains stood bold, powerful, the trees so verdant that even the rocks looked green. In the pasture, the tall grass was lush, almost reaching his saddle, waving in the refreshing breeze.
The mare’s hoofs splashed across a creek, and, somewhere to the north, a longhorn bawled. Daniel couldn’t see the cow, however, for the grass was too high.
What struck him as odd, though, was the fact that he couldn’t see any cattle. Oh, he knew they were there, but finding three thousand head of dumb Tejano beef in three hundred thousand acres could take forever. Usually, at this time of year, it was impossible not to stumble over cattle the Pale Eyes shipped north to graze during the summer. Of course, Daniel didn’t need to find the cattle. He just rode toward the smoke rising from the edge of the woods at the foot of a hill. The wind carried not only the smell of smoke, but the aroma of coffee and bacon. That, he knew, would lead him to Vince Christensen.
The mare snorted, stopped, and Daniel heard the dung splatter beneath the grass. He waited, then let his mount graze on some of the grass. Why let Carmody hog it all? he asked himself.
Ahead of him, in the rocks above the smoke, sunlight glinted. Daniel leaned forward, wondering. The mare lifted her head—and saved Daniel’s life.
He never heard the shot until the echo reached him after the mare lay in the grass, kicking spasmodically though already dead. He had pitched out of the saddle, rolled through the grass, and now started to push himself up. The second shot tore through the grass far from him. On his knees, Daniel reached for the revolver, spotted something brown through the tall grass, came to his feet, and sprinted toward it.
The second shot he heard, and felt, instantly. It dug a ditch across his left side, and knocked him into the mound of manure the buckskin had just deposited, ricocheting off the boulder in front of him. Rolling over, he felt tears stream down his face, and he cursed himself for crying, but, son-of-a-bitch, his side hurt. The next shot kicked up mud into his cheeks, and he raised the Remington, shakily, and snapped a shot.
“Damned taibo gun!” he said through clenched teeth. The percussion cap had misfired.
He turned over, crawled, leaped the final feet, and pulled himself into a ball behind the boulder a second before the next bullet clipped off the side of the big rock. Daniel moved to his right, aimed, pulled the trigger. This time the Remington bucked in his hand, and he slid back behind the boulder.
“Stupid.” He lowered the smoking revolver. The shooter had to be a good two hundred yards, probably more, from where he squatted—far out of range for the antiquated cap-and-ball revolver the agency provided him with. From the thundering echo that bounced off the Wichitas, from how hard his horse had dropped, from the way his side bled and throbbed, he was up against one of those far-shooting Sharps rifles the Tejanos had used to whip The People at Adobe Walls.
Daniel had no chance, and he knew it. Now would be a good time to begin his death song.
A fly buzzed. Next came the sound of hoofs on hard rock. Daniel picked up the Remington, thumbed back the hammer, and leaned to his left. Cautiously he pushed back the grass with the long barrel. Sweat burned his eyes, clouded his vision, but he spotted a horse—brown, maybe a bay—trotting up the hill, away from the snaking smoke. He couldn’t make out much about the rider, other than he wore a light-colored hat and a duster that billowed behind him in the wind. Still, he wasn’t truly certain that he wasn’t hallucinating. Horse and rider vanished behind the hill, and Daniel slid back behind the rock. He tore a strip of cloth from his calico shirt, pressed it against his side, and pulled himself up.
Dizziness and nausea almost knocked him onto his back, but somehow he managed to keep his feet. Salty sweat poured into the wound, and he bit his bottom lip. Cattle bawled, and more hoofs sounded, but these came from the east. Still, Daniel fumbled for his rev
olver, felt it slip from his fingers and off the boulder, and felt himself sliding back to the ground.
* * * * *
“Vince! Vince!” A shot rang out.
“Get up!” Rough hands dragged Daniel to his feet. A hand slapped his face. Fingers gripped his black hair, and pulled it until Daniel screamed. His eyes opened.
Another shot roared. Daniel managed to glimpse a Pale Eyes cowboy on a side-stepping horse cock a Colt, send another bullet toward the sky. “Vince!” the rider yelled.
“Damn it, Joe,” the man pulling Daniel’s hair snapped, “lope over yonder. See what the hell’s going on. See if Vince is wounded or what. Now! We’ll bring this buck along.”
“Bet these Comanch’ was tryin’ to steal our herd,” another voice said. “And Vince stopped ’em.”
He neither heard nor saw the rider leave. The next thing he knew, his face was mashed against the flank of a horse. He thought he saw the brand, †††, but wasn’t sure. Someone jerked him by his vest into the saddle, and then the rider swung up behind him, the saddle’s big horn jamming into Daniel’s bleeding side. Spurs chimed, and the horse exploded.
Daniel vomited.
A sledge-hammer jarred his head. “Do that again … I kill you here.”
* * * * *
Air rushed out of his lungs. The cowhand had thrown him to the ground. He reached for his bleeding side, but, before he made it, a boot rocked his ribs. What the buffalo gun’s bullet had failed to do, the boot succeeded. Three ribs cracked, and Daniel felt his bladder release.
“Bastard. This red bastard …”
“Put that gun away.”
“But he murdered Vince. Slit his throat!”
“We ain’t shootin’ him.”
“But …”
“We’re hangin’ the red nigger.”
Someone jerked his head off the gravel. Hemp slid over his head, tightened against his throat. They jerked him to his feet. The rope choked off his air. When he fell, they dragged him.
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