That Night at the Palace

by Watson, L. D.

  Crawford was obviously trying to lay low. But McKinney had busted enough bookies to know that they survived on cash flow from their runners, which meant that Crawford had to keep working or risk the wrath of an angry bookie. If there was one thing McKinney knew, the thing low-life runners feared most was getting on the bad side of a bookie, and the best way to do that was to show up empty handed.

  “Red ‘41 Chevy Coup,” McKinney said pointing. “KJ4. I can’t see the rest.”

  The Chief pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket. “3239,” he replied. “I think that’s our man.”

  The chief was amazed at how sure of himself McKinney always seemed to be, and how he also always seemed to be right.

  “A runner in a car like that,” McKinney remarked with a headshake. “Our boy’s not a genius. Smart runners try to keep a low profile.”

  “Well, now we found him, what do we do? We can’t arrest ‘im.”

  “We wait a while to see where he goes.”

  Looking to the right, Chief Hightower noticed an old black pickup pull into the lot and park. He started to mention that Model-AA’s were becoming rare when he saw Cherokee-One-Leg climbing out of the cab.

  “What is that old Indian doin’ here?”

  “Is that the old man Jesse was stayin’ with?”

  “That’s him. Cherokee-One-Leg.”

  The two watched as the old man pulled his crutch from the truck. He was wearing a long blue U.S. Cavalry coat that reached well past his knees. When he got his balance, he adjusted his coat and then reached in under the coat and adjusted a cavalry holster that he had concealed.

  “Is that old man carryin’ a gun?” the chief asked.

  “It looks that way.”

  “We have to stop him! He’s goin’ to get himself killed!”

  “From what I’ve read about him, I suspect he’s the one who’ll do the killin’. But I ‘spect we should stop ‘im.”

  The two law officers got out of the prowler and approached the old man from behind as he was slowly making his way to the front door of the roadhouse.

  “Cherokee, what are you doin’?” Jefferson asked.

  The old man glanced over his shoulder. “The job the two law officers are supposed to be doin’.”

  “Cherokee, stop,” the chief said as he put his hand on the old man’s shoulder.

  Cherokee stopped and turned with a fiery look in his eye. “They’re gonna put that boy on the chair if we don’t stop ‘em,” he said with a glare at the chief.

  McKinney had seen the look in Cherokee’s eye on other men before. It was the look of a man who was prepared to go to battle and was not afraid to die. The lawman instinctively unbuttoned his coat and slipped his hand under it.

  Cherokee looked at McKinney and asked, “Are you expectin’ trouble?”

  The two men stared at one another as the chief argued, “Cherokee, you goin’ in there and getting’ yourself shot isn’t goin’ to help Jesse.”

  “I ain’t goin’ to get shot,” the old man replied without taking his eyes off McKinney.

  “We’ll take care of this,” McKinney said.

  “You’re just now figurin’ out who we’re after. If you had acted when I told you to, that Stoker gal would still be alive.”

  “You’re right. But damn-it, Cherokee,” the chief began, still not recognizing the standoff between the lawman and the soldier, “you go in there, you’ll be the next one killed.”

  “We can handle this,” McKinney said, sensing trouble.

  In the years to come Corporal McKinney would think back on that moment and wonder how it had transpired. Perhaps he had underestimated the man because of his age. Or perhaps he was the one succumbing to the effects of age himself. All he knew was that before he’d had time to get a grip on the .45 under his coat, the Indian fighter had his old army Colt revolver pressed squarely against Brewster’s forehead.

  The chief froze. Across the parking lot a man and woman had just stepped out of a car and were headed into the roadhouse when they looked over to see the spectacle of an old one-legged black man leaning on a crutch and holding a gun to the head of a much younger white man. The couple immediately darted into the building.

  “Cherokee, please put that gun away and let us handle this,” Jefferson pleaded.

  The old man, still staring at McKinney, slowly pulled the gun away from the Ranger’s head and slid it into the holster under his coat.

  “I’m going in there,” Cherokee said as three men came running out of the building. Two of the three were carrying baseball bats, but the one in the lead had a shotgun pressed against his shoulder.

  “I don’t know what this is about, but take it off my property,” the lead man said as he stopped about ten feet away.

  The chief’s heart was pounding. A moment before Cherokee had a gun against Corporal McKinney’s head, and now some bartender had a gun pointed at him. For a policeman who in ten years of service had never once pulled his gun out of the holster, this turn of events was a bit nerve-wracking.

  McKinney calmly pulled his coat back, revealing his badge, “I’m a Texas Ranger, everything’s under control. You three go back inside.”

  “I don’t care if you’re J. Edgar Hoover, take it off my property.”

  McKinney then glared at the man. The new breed of Ranger would politely explain that they had business there, and then he’d request that the bartender cooperate. McKinney wasn’t the new breed.

  “We have business here,” McKinney said with a scorching fury, “and we will be here as long as we need to be. Now you will put that shotgun down and leave us be or I’ll shut this place down.”

  “Shut me down? On what grounds?”

  “Well, for starters there’s a bookie operating in there. And if this house is like every other roadhouse I’ve ever raided, you have a back room where there’s a craps game, and if it’s not craps, you’ve got a couple of prostitutes workin’ in there. If it’s both you’ll be shut down for at least a month. Now, what’s it going to be?”

  The man was clearly angry but lowered the shotgun and slowly turned around to face his two companions. “Go back in,” he ordered.

  “You’re not gonna to let that Ranger push you around are ya, boss?” One of the men protested.

  “Shut up and get inside,” the leader ordered as the three walked away.

  McKinney turned and looked at Cherokee. “You weren’t plannin’ to shoot Crawford, were you?”

  “No,” Cherokee said as he turned and headed toward the door. “You boys better hurry before he hightails it out the back.”

  The chief looked at McKinney for explanation as they followed the old man.

  “The bartender’s warning Crawford that we’re out here,” McKinney explained.

  “Then we better hurry,” the chief answered, his heart still pounding.

  “I don’t think we need to,” McKinney answered.

  The two policemen followed the old man into the building. Just as they got inside they saw Crawford head out the back door. As he went out he looked back at them.

  “Should we try to catch him?” Chief Hightower asked.

  “No,” McKinney replied. “He’ll be deep in those woods before we can get to the door.”

  “What should we do?”

  Cherokee smiled and turned and headed back out. “I’ve got some corn liquor at my place if you boys want talk.”

  McKinney looked at the chief. “I’m not sure what that old soldier is up to, but I think we just helped him lay his trap.”

  Chapter 13

  PLEASANT GROVE,

  CHEROKEE COUNTY TEXAS

  12:15 a.m., December 6, 1941

  Cherokee handed a small glass with homemade whiskey to Brewster McKinney, who sat down on one of the three chairs in the little old house. Cherokee then pou
red a second glass for Chief Hightower as the policeman looked at all of the plaques, medals, and pictures on the wall above the fireplace that served as a shrine to a long military career. Many of the pictures showed Cherokee in his cavalry uniform standing next to colonels and generals.

  “Good lord, Cherokee,” the chief commented. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see a picture of Custer up here.”

  The old man settled into a rocker closest to the fireplace and shook his head.

  “Custer,” he snorted with disgust. “He was a damn fool. My pa scouted for ‘im. Pa was smart enough to quit before Little Bighorn. Custer got all his men killed, and the papers acted like he’s some kind of hero. If he’d lived he would have gotten court marshalled.”

  The chief looked at the old Indian and then at McKinney.

  The Ranger just grinned and shook his head. The life this old man must have had.

  The chief looked back at the pictures. “Is that Teddy Roosevelt?”

  The old man grinned. “Ole Teddy. The Colonel was a born leader. He didn’t know the first thing about fightin’ a war, but his men would have followed him straight into hell if he’d led ‘em there.”

  McKinney took a sip of the whiskey while the chief sat down in the third chair. Normally he should have considered arresting a man who was in possession of illegal liquor, but it was late, and the Ranger had much more important things on his mind than some small-time bootlegger. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the stuff tasted pretty good.

  “What do you know about Crawford?” Brewster asked the old warrior.

  Cherokee leaned back in the chair with his glass resting on his good leg.

  “Well,” Cherokee began, “he had a lot to do with that Stoker woman killin’ herself back in ’36. And he wants Jesse dead for killing his brother.”

  The chief’s eyes widened as he and the Ranger looked at one another.

  “Jesse killed Peterson Crawford?” McKinney asked.

  “Yeah, but if he hadn’t’ve I would’ve. I thought he was gonna kill the kid. Took ‘im out to the tracks. I suspect he intended to scare the boy. It was me that he really wanted. He tried to shoot me, but all he got was my peg. I fell down before I could get a shot off. Jesse clubbed him over the head with a piece of Bois de Arc.” The old man grinned, “That Bois de Arc is so hard, it’s like getting hit with a hammer.”

  “What happened to Sarah Stoker? You said she killed herself?”

  “You remember that lynchin’ up in Jacksonville?” Cherokee asked, seemingly changing the subject while looking at the chief.

  “Bucky Davis,” the Chief commented.

  “Mert, his pa, is one of my cousins. They said Bucky raped some gal. The boys, Jesse and Clifford, were there at the hangin’. I don’t know how, but they figured out that the oldest Crawford boy was the one who’d raped that poor gal. There was a lot of talk in those days about riots after that, remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “I asked the boys to keep an eye on Crawford for me. I guess I hoped that maybe we could prove that Crawford did it, I could turn him over to some of the boys here in the Grove. Well, the kids figured out that Crawford was doin’ somethin’ with the Stoker woman. They’d seen him talkin’ to her a couple of times. One day they climbed up on the picture show and saw ‘im hit her.”

  “That’s what they were doin’ up there?”

  Cherokee nodded. “Well, the night of the carnival she had a fallin’ out with her husband because of the two brothers. Stoker left with their daughter, and the woman went walkin’ down that alley behind your police station all by herself. Jesse followed to keep an eye on her.

  “I was sittin’ on my tailgate sellin tomatoes with Clifford when we heard gunshots from that alley. We got there just in time to see the two Crawfords hightailin’ it. According to Jesse, Sarah said she was pregnant. He thinks they had raped her. Well, she wasn’t one to just take it; she pulled a gun and started shootin’ at the two. She hit the younger one, but the older brother got the gun from her and beat her up a bunch. When the brothers took off she shot herself. Jesse and Clifford held her as she died.”

  “Dear god, they were just boys back then,” the chief commented.

  “Yeah, it was pretty hard on ‘em.”

  “What about her body?” The chief asked.

  “To tell the truth, I don’t know what they did with her. Jesse and Cliff wanted me to leave. Remember now, that lynchin’ was just a few weeks before. The boys were afraid of what would happen if I got seen with a dead white woman. Lookin’ back, I probably should’ve gone for you, but the fact was that I figured that the boys were right. Nobody would have believed what two kids and a colored man had to say when there was a dead, pregnant, white woman layin’ there.”

  The chief hung his head down. “You were probably right.”

  “That still doesn’t explain what happened to her body,” McKinney added.

  “Those boys know every armadillo hole within miles. I suspect they used that old Ford stake-bed and took her deep into the woods someplace. That, or they tied some rocks to her and dropped her in the river,” Cherokee explained.

  “Why are you just now tellin’ me this, Cherokee? I don’t care about Irwin, but poor Jewel should have known what happened to her mama,” Jefferson said.

  Cherokee leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, holding the glass in both hands. “She begged us,” he answered with a break in his voice.

  “She didn’t want her girl knowin,” he continued. “And she didn’t want those two little Crawford girls knowin’ what their daddy had done. She was a good woman. She didn’t deserve to die like that.”

  “Are you tellin’ me that Jesse’s willin’ to face the electric chair to keep Gemma from knowin’ what a louse her old man was?” Jefferson commented.

  “We talked a lot about it, but the boy’s got a head harder than that Bois de Arc branch. He won’t budge on that. I think he figures he’s guilty of murderin’ her pa.”

  “But you said Peterson was going to kill him. He wouldn’t have gotten in trouble for that,” Jefferson added.

  “Either of you ever killed a man?” the old man asked.

  Both lawmen shook their heads.

  “It stays with you. There’s nothin’ you can do to wash it off. I suspect Jesse’s thought about that night every single day since he was twelve years old. I bet he wakes up at night seeing that guy’s face. I know that I do. And that girl of his, can you imagine what it’s like to love a girl knowin’ that you killed her daddy? All she remembers about her father is that he loved her. She don’t know about his bad side. How do you think she’d feel if she found out that her daddy was a rapist? And how do you think she’d feel if she found out that the man she hoped to marry had killed him? That poor boy ponders on those things every single day. That’s an awful lot of weight for a young man to carry around. He don’t want to die, but he’d rather die than have that girl go through life thinkin’ her daddy was a bad man.”

  #

  STAFFORD’S BAR,

  LUFKIN, TEXAS

  2:15 p.m., Saturday December 6, 1941

  Irwin Stoker had been off the Cherokee County work farm for a little over twenty-four hours. He had been drunk for almost twenty of those hours. He was surprised when a sheriff’s deputy drove up to the road gang and called his name. The deputy didn’t say much about why he’d been called or why he was being escorted to see Judge Buckner in the back seat of a county sheriff’s vehicle and not one of the school buses used to haul the inmates. All the deputy said was that Buckner had ordered his release.

  When he got to the courthouse, the shackles were removed, and he was given his own clothes. He was then taken through a series of offices that led to the judge’s private chambers.

  The judge was sitting behind his desk in shirtsleeves. Surprisingly, he stood and came
around the big mahogany desk and asked Irwin to sit down with him. He then told the deputy who had escorted Irwin to go. It came as a complete shock when the judge told him that his only daughter, Jewel, had been found dead. He wasn’t told anything else except that foul play was most likely involved. The judge then assured him that the Texas Rangers were on the case and those involved would be apprehended within days.

  After leaving Judge Buckner’s office, Irwin was driven home by another deputy. Forty-five minutes after hearing the news about Jewel, Irwin was drunk. He awoke around eleven that morning with a throbbing headache and not a drop of liquor to help him with it.

  The closest place to buy a real bottle of whiskey was way down in Lufkin. Irwin didn’t want to make the long drive, but the only other option was to get the corn whiskey they made over in Pleasant Grove. The corn mash would be better than no whiskey at all, but he’d just spent the night drinking that stuff, and the headache he was experiencing was the result. He didn’t want another headache. What he needed was some real whiskey.

  Six bottles of Old Crow cost him almost all the cash he had in the house.

  On the way back to Elza he decided to spend what was left on a hamburger and a couple of drinks at Stafford’s Bar on the north end of town. But before going in he managed to drink down about half of one of the bottles of Crow.

  He was sitting at the bar finishing up his hamburger when he overheard two men at the end of the bar talking to the bartender about those murders up in Elza. Irwin’s ears perked up when heard them first mention Elza, but they had his full attention when they said that the second kid killed was a “pretty young blonde-headed gal.”

  Irwin sat there with his head down and began to weep.

  The bartender was the first to notice the man at the middle of the bar crying over his hamburger. He didn’t think much of it at first. It wasn’t unusual to see a man crying in Stafford’s, especially in the afternoon. Most of the time it was because some poor farmer got his note called in by the bank or some poor oil field worker got fired, leaving him with a house full of kids to feed and no paycheck. This one was obviously a farmer.