Go-Ahead Rider

by Robert J Conley

  “You’re the sheriff,” he said. “You get paid for these things.”

  “Yes,” said Rider. “I know, but this one is very important to the Cherokee Nation. There’s an urgency to the situation. The Council is meeting, and the missing man is a councilman. If we don’t find him soon and get him back to the meeting, the others may vote for the railroad to come into Tahlequah.”

  Again White Tobacco sat and puffed and thought.

  “What is the man’s name?” he asked.

  “The missing man is Mix Hail.”

  “Wait,” said White Tobacco, and he got up from his chair and moved slowly and methodically around the small space in the arbor, rummaging through baskets and boxes. Finally he went back to his chair and sat down. From his wrinkled, leathery old hands, he poured onto the table some colored beads, a crystal, and a lump of red ocher tied to a length of string.

  “Now,” he said, “we’ll see what we can see.”

  After he had walked the length of Muskogee Avenue and back again, George rejoined Earl Bob on the capitol grounds. Beehunter had not yet returned. He decided that he could be just as useless and not nearly so conspicuous in the office. He told Earl Bob where he would be, took his horse back to the sheriff’s barn, and went into the office. The fire in the stove was nearly out, so he built that up enough to boil water, and he made some coffee. He tried to make it just the way he had seen Rider do it. Then he settled down at his desk to wait. After he had gone through about half of his fresh pot of coffee, which, he immediately decided, was not nearly as good as the one Rider had made earlier, Earl Bob came into the office. George stood up, he thought, a little too quickly, too anxiously.

  “Is Beehunter back?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Josie said, yeah, old Mix has been staying with her, but she was worried, she said, ’cause he didn’t come by last night. She fed him breakfast yesterday morning, then she never seen him again. She’s worried.”

  “You know where she lives, right?” asked George.

  “Yeah, but like I said before, she won’t talk to us.”

  “I don’t want to talk to her,” said George. “I want you to walk me to her house—from the capitol.”

  Earl Bob shrugged, and the two deputies left the office and walked to the capitol, where Earl Bob said something to Beehunter in Cherokee. George thought they were probably talking about him.

  “Let’s go,” said George.

  Earl Bob started walking north, parallel to but east of Muskogee Avenue. George’s first thought was that if people had seen Mix Hail leave the capitol and walk toward the livery, which was south from the capitol on Muskogee, then Mix could not have been going directly to Josie Wicket’s house. He had to have gone somewhere else. Still, George let Earl Bob lead him all the way to the woman’s house. It was on the northwest edge of town—really just outside of town. George could see how Mix Hail might have been able to spend some time discreetly at this place. It was off the road, accessible only by a footpath through thick woods, and only a small area was cleared around it for a yard. It was not likely that anyone would just happen by. Anyone coming to Josie Wicket’s house would have to be either lost or a deliberate visitor. George wondered how Beehunter had known that Mix Hail was staying there.

  “Be a good place to waylay someone,” he said.

  It was not long after George had left Earl Bob back at the capitol and gone back to the office that Rider returned. He walked in and went straight to the coffeepot on the stove. George was glad that he had made some fresh coffee, but he wondered if Rider would notice that it was not as good as his. Rider poured himself a cup and went to his desk.

  “What did you find out, chooj?” he said.

  “Well,” said George, “Mix Hail had been staying with a woman named Josie Wicket.”

  Rider put down his cup and looked directly at George, his face registering surprise.

  “You sure about that?” he asked.

  “Beehunter knew, but I sent him up to question her anyway. Earl Bob said that she wouldn’t talk to us. According to Beehunter, she confirmed it. She also said that he had breakfast with her yesterday morning, and she hasn’t seen him since then. She’s worried about him, so she must have expected him to come back last night. Course this is all secondhand with me. It was Earl Bob who told me what Beehunter said.”

  “Yeah,” said Rider. “Okay. So old Mix was shacked up with Josie Wicket. I’ll be. I wonder how I missed out on that bit of news.”

  “I didn’t ask,” said George, “but I wonder how Beehunter knew.”

  “Josie’s his sister-in-law,” said Rider, “his wife’s sister.”

  “Oh,” said George. He still didn’t understand why Beehunter would automatically know about a clandestine affair between his wife’s sister and a respected councilman, but the explanation obviously was sufficient for Rider. He let it go.

  “Anything else?” asked Rider.

  “I had Earl Bob walk me to Josie Wicket’s house. I didn’t see anything along the way, but two thoughts came to my mind. One was that the trail to that house would be a likely spot for an ambush. But the other is that the people who saw Mix Hail leave the capitol yesterday said he was headed toward the livery. He wasn’t going in the direction of Josie Wicket’s house.”

  “Good thinking, George. You’re going to do all right here.”

  George stood up and walked to the stove with his cup. He poured himself some more coffee, then turned to face Rider.

  “I spent a lot of time today doing nothing,” he said. “I walked down the street and back, and I sat in here waiting for Beehunter to get back and after that just waiting for you. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Rider smiled.

  “George,” he said, “you just learned something about police work. Lots of times you just sit and wait. You’ll learn to live with it, not worry about it. You done good today. You found out more than I did.”

  “What did you find out?” asked George.

  “Just that old Mix stopped by Cholly’s house—that’s his brother—when he first got here, ate a meal with them, and told them that he was going to be staying in town this trip. They ain’t seen him since then.”

  “So what do we do from here?”

  “Somebody had to see old Mix go somewhere,” said Rider. “He left the capitol walking toward the livery, but he didn’t go to the livery. Come on, let’s take a walk.”

  Rider, with George following along, walked over to the capitol and started from there toward the livery barn where Mix Hail’s horse and buggy were stashed. He stopped at every business along the way, asking the same question: “Did you see Mix Hail walk past here last evening?”

  Some of the businessmen said they had been too busy at the time to have noticed anything, but several did say that they had seen him pass by. The last one to give that positive response was Alfred Kirk of Al’s Eats, just about halfway down toward the livery.

  “Sure,” said Kirk. “I was getting ready for my busy time, you know, dinner hour. So I was kind of watching out in the street to see who might come in. That’s how come me to remember. Mix walked up like he was in kind of a hurry, but then he stopped. Right out there. I thought sure he was coming in, but then he walked on.”

  “Did you see where he went?” asked Rider.

  “Naw, he passed on by my window there, and that’s all I seen of him.”

  Al Kirk had been the last of the Muskogee Avenue merchants to have seen Mix Hail.

  “Well,” said Rider to George, standing back out on the sidewalk, “we know he got this far, but we still don’t know where he was going. He either turned east or west off of Muskogee, or somebody stopped him, or someone’s lying to us. Now we got to figure out which one.”

  “If anyone had stopped him here against his will,” said George, “that is, by use of force, someone would have seen it. It was still broad daylight.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. Listen, George, Exie’s going to have our dinner on the table her
e in a minute, and all these folks along here will be closing up to go home, too. You go on up to the house and tell Exie for me that I’ll be along directly. I need to stop by and see the chief. I know he’s worried about this Mix Hail case.”

  Later that evening, following their meal, Rider and Tanner were again out in the dog run with coffee. Rider was smoking his pipe.

  “George,” said Rider, “first thing in the morning we got to approach this thing from another direction. I’m going to pull all but two of the boys off of the capitol detail. We’re going to question everyone between the capitol and Al’s place, and then east and west from Al’s. We’re going to ask them to recall everything they saw last evening. Who was out on the street? Did they see anything unusual? Like that, see. We find out who else was out there on the street, then we track them down and ask them the same questions. Somewhere along the line someone’s going to tell us where Mix went to. I’m putting you in charge of that. I’ll tell the boys in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” said George.

  Rider took a sip from his coffee cup, set it aside, and puffed contemplatively on his pipe for a long, silent moment. Somewhere in the night a whippoorwill sounded its lonesome call.

  “While you’re doing that,” said Rider, “I’m going to start to harass those railroad fellows.”

  The evening was still young when Rider had finished his pipe and was thinking about having another cup of coffee, when Delbert Swim came walking up to the dog run, a little winded from having just walked up the hill to Rider’s house.

  “’Siyo, Del,” said Rider.

  “Go-Ahead,” said Swim, speaking Cherokee, “you better come down.”

  “What is it?” said Rider.

  Swim then noticed Tanner seated across the dog run from Rider, and he decided to switch to English in deference to the new deputy.

  “They just brought in Mix Hail,” he said. “He’s dead.”

  Chapter Five

  “Don’t seem as if he’s been dead long,” said Rider. “Judging by the shape the body’s in. Plus he was found out on the road to Fourteen Mile Creek, and I just traveled that road not four hours ago. One gunshot wound to the heart. Close range, too. I’d say the gun was stuck up against his chest and fired. No money in his pockets.”

  Delbert Swim handed a Remington .44 six-shooter to Rider.

  “This was found beside him, Rider,” he said. “One shot’s been fired.”

  Rider took the pistol, but he gave it only a cursory glance.

  “Okay, Delbert,” he said. “Where’s the folks that found him?”

  “They’re over at your office, waiting for you.”

  “George,” said Rider, “go over there and take down their statements, will you? Get as much detail out of them as you can. And get them to sign the statements. Delbert will go with you. I’ve got to go tell Chief Ross.”

  Rider left the body there in the undertaker’s parlor and went to the sheriff’s barn for his horse. Then he rode to Park Hill to see Chief Ross. It was late when he returned to Tahlequah, but George Tanner was still in the office, with the lamp burning. Rider read the statements that George had taken. There wasn’t much information. Rider knew the people who had discovered the body, two full-blood Cherokees, a husband and wife. They had been on their way home from Tahlequah when they came across the remains of Mix Hail in the middle of the road just about five miles out of town. The body had been lying facedown, the Remington right at its head.

  Rider decided to visit the site in the morning, though he didn’t expect to find anything there.

  “You want some coffee, Rider?” said George.

  “Yeah,” said Rider with a sigh.

  George poured a cup of the coffee he had brewed while waiting for Rider to return from Park Hill. He placed the cup on Rider’s desk, then went back to his own chair.

  “Wado, chooj,” said Rider. He picked up the cup and sipped some coffee. “George, something’s wrong here.”

  “If Mix Hail was just killed in the last four hours,” said George, “where was he between the time Alfred Kirk saw him yesterday evening and the time he was killed?”

  Rider nodded his head slowly in agreement.

  “That’s part of it,” he said.

  “There’s somewhere between twenty and twenty-four hours unaccounted for.”

  “Yeah. And there’s more. How did he get out there on that road? His horse and buggy are in town. He was on foot. Did someone kill him somewhere else and then carry him out there? I think so. There was straw stuck to his clothes and in the hair on the back of his head—like he’d been laying on his back in it. He was found facedown on a dirt road.”

  He took another sip of coffee.

  “And then there’s this,” he said. He picked up the Remington and held it up for George to see. “You ever see this before?”

  George got up and walked over to Rider’s desk, where he squinted at the gun.

  “It’s a Remington .44,” he said, “like Jesse Halfbreed’s. Is it Jesse’s?”

  “It is,” said Rider. “But if Jesse killed Mix, which I don’t believe, why would he leave his gun there for us to find?”

  “Panic, maybe,” said George, “or maybe he was drunk again.”

  “A drunk man might kill someone and drop his gun, but I don’t think he’d haul the body off somewhere and drop the gun there. It don’t make sense to me.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “I know Jess,” Rider continued. “This ain’t like him. When he gets drunk and does something stupid, he does it right out in the open. You saw that.”

  “Yeah,” said George. He went back to his own desk and sat down. He thought for a moment in silence. “You think whoever killed Mix Hail put that gun there so we’d think Jesse Halfbreed was the killer?”

  “I think that’s a strong possibility,” said Rider. “Course there’s others. Jess could have sold the gun or traded it for whiskey. Anything’s possible. We’ll ask him in the morning.”

  By morning Rider had reordered his priorities. He sent three deputies out to question the people in the area previously defined as being where Mix Hail had last been seen alive, leaving Beehunter and Earl Bob at the capitol, and he took Tanner with him to examine the site on the road where the body had been discovered. There were two other important jobs to be done, and Rider considered sending George off alone to see to at least one of them, but he had decided against that. He told himself that now that they were in fact investigating a murder, there was no virtue in taking chances. No one should go out alone. He wondered, though, if he simply didn’t trust George yet with anything really important. Well, he thought, whatever the reason, the decision’s been made.

  They located the spot easily based on landmarks the Cherokee couple had described, and Rider was totally satisfied when he found a trace of blood and some bits of straw in the middle of the road.

  “See this, George,” he said. “This straw got here off the body. There’s no straw around here. Just this. Right where somebody dumped poor old Mix.”

  “So it seems,” said George. “He was killed somewhere else.”

  They looked around for a few more minutes, finding nothing, and then Rider climbed back into his saddle.

  “Let’s go see Jess Halfbreed,” he said.

  “What about all these tracks?” said George.

  “That’s just the problem, George. There’s too many of them to do us any good. Come on.”

  No one was home at Jesse Halfbreed’s house. Rider told George to look around the outside of the house while he checked the inside. He noticed right away that there were no women’s clothes in the house. He could find nothing else of any use or interest, so he went outside to find George.

  “Looks like Jesse’s woman packed up and left him,” he said. “You see anything?”

  George pointed off toward the woods behind the house.

  “About halfway to the trees,” he said. “Looks like a jug.”

  Rider wa
lked out toward the object, George following. It was a jug. Rider picked it up and sniffed at its mouth.

  “Whiskey,” he said. “It’s empty. What’s that?”

  He was pointing to another object in the grass, halfway again to the trees. This time George trotted ahead to check. Rider walked behind him.

  “It’s a shoe,” said George.

  Rider looked from the shoe to the woods, then back toward the cabin.

  “George,” he said, “I got a suspicious thought in my head that tells me that somebody’s trying to lead us to something.”

  He started walking toward the woods, following a straight line drawn from the house through the jug and the shoe. George felt the handle of the Starr revolver hanging at his side for reassurance, then he started to follow Rider. George was looking down as he entered the woods to make sure he didn’t trip over a fallen branch or stumble on uneven ground. He hadn’t taken more than six steps when he came up abruptly on Rider, standing still. He looked up. Jesse Halfbreed was hanging from a branch of a red oak tree.

  “Oh, my God,” said George.

  Jesse Halfbreed’s hands were not tied. There was a nail keg lying on its side just a few feet away, and right at the base of the tree from which the body dangled, one shoe off, was a pile of paper money and loose change, the bills held down by an egg-sized rock. After Rider had counted the money, which came to $47.23, and replaced the rock, he sat down wearily on the ground and leaned back against a tree. George was still staring at the body. It was swinging only slightly and turning slowly, but the movement was enough to cause the rope to creak noisily as it rubbed against the branch.

  “What’s it look like, George?” said Rider.

  George didn’t answer immediately, and Rider couldn’t tell whether it was because he was about to be sick or because he was trying to formulate a response.

  “Looks like suicide,” said George. “Looks like he climbed up on that keg and put the noose around his own neck and then kicked over the keg.”

  Rider gestured toward the cash at the base of the tree.

  “What about that?” he said.