All Men Fear Me

by Donis Casey

  “Is Dutch going, too?”

  “Dutch?”

  “The one in the tall hat.” Trent sounded impatient.

  “He didn’t say so. Just the young one, the Indian.”

  “Can you describe the third one?”

  “Wiry little fellow with a beard. Had on an U.S. Army uniform hat. They said he was a Wobblie.”

  ***

  Scott didn’t bother to say hello to his deputy when he strode into the jailhouse with a piece of paper in his hand. “I just got a wire from Sheriff Duncan over in Pontotoc County. He’s asking for volunteers to ride on a large gathering of W.C.U. agitators who have gathered near Little River with a mind to start a rebellion.”

  Trent stood up so quickly that his chair nearly tipped over. “Scott, there was man in here not five minutes ago who told me that he overheard three fellows planning to leave out tomorrow to join up with an army of draft resisters not far from Sasakwa. Said one of them was the man with the tall hat who started the riot—Dutch Leonard.”

  Scott’s eyebrows knit. “Who was this helpful eavesdropper?”

  “I didn’t know him. Called himself Nick Smith. Said he hasn’t been in town but a little while and didn’t fancy getting mixed up in doings that were none of his business, but he had been thinking about it and he couldn’t conscience treason. He told me he’s staying at Miz Worley’s, in case you want to talk to him.”

  “Did he describe the other two conspirators?”

  “Said there was a young one who looked like an Indian.” Trent hesitated and bit his lip. “He said the other one was a wiry little fellow with a beard and a U.S. Army uniform hat.”

  Scott lowered himself into one of the chairs under the window.

  Trent plowed on. “Mr. Smith said the young one made plans to meet the bearded fellow at dawn tomorrow, out behind the Masonic Hall, and lead him to the place where the rebels are camped.”

  Scott unlocked his desk drawer and retrieved his gun belt. “Let’s go talk to this Nick Smith.”

  ***

  Mrs. Worley had never heard of Nick Smith. Scott and Trent stood together in the middle of the road in front of the boarding-

  house for a few minutes to consider their options.

  “Well, Trent, what did Smith look like?”

  “Not much of anything. Ordinary as dirt. He had a little scar next to his right eye. Oh, and he did have on one of them hats that look like an upside-down pot.”

  “He don’t sound familiar to me,” Scott admitted. “Do you reckon he was trying to send us on a wild goose chase?”

  “Listen, I hate to, but got to say it…” Trent’s face flushed as only a redhead’s can.

  “So say it.”

  “All this trouble started after Ruth’s uncle Rob Gunn came to town.”

  Scott was not surprised at Trent’s suspicion. “You think Rob Gunn is behind all this trouble?”

  “I don’t know. I only met him a couple times and he seemed all right. But Ruthie told me right off that he’s a Wobblie organizer. And she also told me that he’s leaving Boynton tomorrow.” Trent had formed an opinion about Rob Gunn which wasn’t all that complimentary. Still. “I hope to heaven he ain’t involved. I’d hate to have to look Ruth in the eye if we have to arrest her mother’s brother for sedition.”

  “I’ll tell you what, son, let’s you and me try to follow these two rebels after they meet up at the Masonic Hall in the morning. Maybe we can nip this uprising in the bud and save Ruth’s kin to boot.”

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  “There is a wrong organization in Pontotoc, Seminole, Pottawatomie…counties, the purpose

  of which is to resist the draft law.”

  —Ada Weekly News, August 2, 1917

  Following Rob Gunn and Dick Miller from Boynton to the rebel headquarters outside of Sasakwa wasn’t easy for Scott and Trent. Scott wished mightily that Rob had just left town on his own never to be heard from again. But as it was, he felt he had no choice but to see for himself what was Rob was up to and stop him if he could. If Rob was planning to join the insurgents just as Sheriff Duncan and his posse converged on the slacker army with guns blazing, there wouldn’t be anything Scott could do to keep the situation from going to hell. Rob would either end up dead or in Leavenworth.

  Trent met up with Scott at the jailhouse before dawn with two saddled horses in tow, and were well hidden by the time Rob rendezvoused with his contact. Miller picked Rob up in an automobile, which caused the men on horseback some consternation at first. But the roads were so bad that Miller and Rob spent about as much time pushing the auto out of ruts and changing flat tires as they did driving in a forward direction. Sometimes the lawmen had to spend half an hour at a time sitting in the saddle, watching them from the woods off to the side of the road. It was late in the afternoon by the time they got where they were going.

  Scott and his deputy dismounted and followed along on foot as the straining auto headed deeper into the trees. It wasn’t long until they began to hear voices ahead. A lot of voices. Scott motioned to Trent and they stopped as Miller’s auto ground to a halt twenty feet ahead of them.

  Trent followed Scott’s lead and tied Brownie’s reins to a skinny blackjack before the two of them crept forward. They were at the bottom of a craggy hill. A red flag flapped from a pole at the crest, near a broad, flat tree trunk. Trent drew a breath. There were at least a couple hundred people gathered in the clearing.

  Scott surveyed the situation for some minutes. By following Rob he had found the rebel army. Yet he was disappointed that he was not going to be able to do anything for his shirttail kin. It was too late. Rob was in the middle of the enemy camp. “I think we’d better withdraw,” Scott whispered. “Let’s ride south and see if we can meet up with Duncan and his posse before they get here.”

  The two men scooted backwards on their bellies until they were far enough into the woods not to be seen, then crept back to where the horses were tied.

  Someone was there ahead of them. Standing at Brownie’s shoulder was a rough-looking old man in overalls and bare feet. He greeted them with the barrel of a shotgun.

  “We’ve come to join the revolution,” Scott said, without missing a beat.

  “Your tin badge says otherwise,” the man replied. “But I ain’t one to judge. What’s the password?”

  Scott knew they were sunk. “Don’t know. But I finally had enough. I want to join up.”

  The old man wasn’t buying it. “Reckon you can join after I tie you up to yonder persimmon tree. Go ahead on, then, and don’t make any quick moves or I’ll send you both to hell.”

  Chapter Sixty

  “A wise son maketh a glad father,

  but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.”

  —Proverbs 10:1

  Since Charlie slept by himself on a cot in the parlor, he thought that it would be easy for him to sneak out of the house after everyone went to bed. He and Henry had arranged to meet near the plant as soon as Charlie could get away after it became full dark. Which since it was late summer, full dark didn’t happen until nearly nine o’clock. Henry lived in town and didn’t have to account for himself to his uncle, so he volunteered to begin the stakeout earlier. If all went as planned, Charlie could expect everyone in the house to be asleep in time for him to get away by nine-thirty or so. If he had the roan saddled and ready when he snuck out, he could join Henry at the stakeout by ten.

  Things did not go as planned.

  Charlie got home from the brick plant a little after two in the afternoon, ate a mashed bean sandwich, caught a twenty-minute nap, and reported to his father in the corral for his afternoon work assignment.

  One of Shaw’s hands, Tommy Cloud, was working with a newly saddle-broken mule and Shaw was standing outside the fence, watching, when Charlie walked up.

  “Ah, there you are, son. I�
��ve been waiting for you. Kurt has a load of finisher hogs ready to ship out to the co-op in Tulsa. He’s made arrangements to put them on the eleven-fifteen to Muskogee tonight and travel with them all the way to Tulsa. After their troubles, we figured it’d be better for Kurt to start the trip from Boynton late while nobody much is around. Mary and Judy are staying here with Mama until he gets back. Coleman Welsh is going to watch over their place for a spell.”

  Charlie’s heart fell into his boots. Under any other circumstance he’d be champing at the bit to take a train trip, even if it was only to look after a stock car full of pigs. As it was, he envisioned Henry Blackwood sitting outside the brick plant at midnight, wondering where he was. Or worse, Henry catching Dutch Leonard in the act of sabotage and becoming the town hero—without Charlie. He schooled his face to remain impassive. He’d have to figure out some way to get to Henry and call it off. “What do you need me to do, Daddy?”

  “Well, right now we need to get over there to Kurt’s and help him separate out the hogs and get them fed and watered and loaded on the wagons. Me and Gee Dub are going to Tulsa with Kurt. We won’t be leaving for town until maybe eight o’clock, but as soon as it gets dark, I want you to come back here and stay with Mama and them. I reckon you can go on in to work at the plant tomorrow, but stay around close otherwise.”

  Charlie didn’t say anything, but his face must have registered surprise, for Shaw said, “Now, I know you want to go with us, but you’re the one who wanted a war job and you can’t just take the day off when there’s something else you’d rather be doing. Besides, I’m going to feel better about the gals if you’re here to keep an eye out for trouble.”

  Charlie breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t have to abandon his plans after all. He just had to get around his mother, which was always going to be a task. She had ears like a bat.

  ***

  Readying two wagonloads of hogs for transport was hard work. The men had to convince the animals to go through the makeshift chutes, up the ramps, and into the wagons, and if a two-hundred-fifty-pound animal had other plans, then a great deal of persuasion was called for. The sun had already sunk below the horizon before Shaw released Charlie to go home.

  Rather than put the white-maned roan into his stall when he got home, Charlie tied him to a post in the barn, fed and watered him and rubbed him down. When he put the saddle back on, the horse was not happy.

  “Don’t give me no trouble, now, Hero,” Charlie admonished. “You and me got important spy work to do tonight.”

  The roan laid his ears back and blew snot all over Charlie’s shoulder. Undeterred by the horse’s reluctance, the boy walked back up to the house, changed his shirt, and had a light supper with his family as though this night were the same as all the nights that had come before in his unexciting life.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  “Men are as clay in the hands of the consummate leader.”

  —Leaders of Men by Woodrow Wilson, 1890

  Sasakwa was about sixty miles southwest of Boynton, as the crow flies. But a crow would have gotten thoroughly lost if he took the circuitous route that Miller followed as he drove Rob Gunn to the rebel camp. At first the roads were wide enough, but dusty and pitted from the long dry spell, so the going was slow from the beginning. But when they turned off the main thoroughfare onto the farm trails and wagon ruts that led into the interior of Seminole County, Rob found himself profoundly wishing that they had just travelled on horseback in the first place. As they drew nearer their destination, they were stopped a couple of times and questioned at roadblocks that had been set up by the resistance faction. What would normally have been a three-hour trip took twice that, and by the time they reached a bluff on a hill near a remote farm, it was late in the day.

  Rob was surprised at the size of the crowd that awaited them. Tents lined the edge of the woods and a red flag had been hoisted up a makeshift flag pole in the center of the camp. How long had this rebellion been brewing, he wondered? A haunch of beef was roasting on a spit, and a group of women sitting near the fire, shucked ears of corn. Children chased each other through the crowd, their shrill laughter adding to the general chaos. It reminded Rob of a camp meeting, an old-fashioned revival like the ones his father had conducted. He could even feel the fervor of the holy spirit of socialism upon the crowd. He stepped out of the automobile and followed Miller as he walked toward the group. People were turning to look at them, moving toward them, colored and white and Indian, all happy to see him.

  So many hands slapped his back as Miller led him through the crowd that he figured he would be bruised in the morning. He mounted a planed-off stump that doubled as a podium and surveyed the eager faces in front of him as Miller made the introductions, judging his audience before deciding the approach he was going to take.

  He had seen them all before. They were the same impoverished, uneducated, ill-used working men and women he had come to know all over the United States. These were mostly tenant farmers and sharecroppers, so far in debt to banks and landlords that they had no hope of ever being free of it. His heart swelled with compassion. Rob turned his attention back to Miller when he heard his name spoken.

  Miller was looking at him. “Mr. Gunn,” he said, “this here is our army, and we intend to march on Washington, gathering up the thousands of citizens who oppose this banker’s war on the way. We will live off the land, and if anybody can, it’s us folks who turn the soil with our own hands. Mr. Gunn, we aim to sustain ourselves on the crops of this green land all the way to Washington.”

  He moved aside to allow Rob to step forward, and the audience erupted into applause and excited whoops. He stood eyeing the crowd for a long minute after silence fell, until he could feel every eye on him.

  “I hope y’all will call me Rob, and not ‘Mr. Gunn,’ because I’m just a plain working man, just like every one of you.” His voice was pitched high and loud enough to be heard at the farthest reaches of the clearing. “Dick told me your plan. I consulted the governing board of the International Workers of the World about it, and they put their heads together with the leaders of the American Socialist Party. I’m telling y’all this so you’ll know that I ain’t just blowing hot air.” He waited while the crowd cheered it’s approval. Miller slapped Rob on the back so hard that he staggered.

  As he readjusted his hat, his eye fell on an old man escorting two figures into the clearing at the point of a shotgun. He tried not to fall off the stump when he recognized the prisoners. He recovered himself quickly. “Yes, well. Both them organizations had a thing or two they want me to relay to y’all before you get your revolution to going. The leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World have conveyed to me that the union cannot back your plan. They advocate resistance, but not open rebellion during time of war. Y’all are on your own.”

  A strange surge of noise rose on the air, like a moan, that seemed to have no source. Rob was suddenly reminded of a lynching. The hair stood up on the back of his neck. He glanced toward Trent and Scott, now both tied to the bole of a persimmon tree at the edge of his line of sight. They had both fixed him with a grim stare. He took a breath and sternly returned his thoughts to the matter at hand. “I’ve been recruiting and organizing for the I.W.W. for a decade. I’m a union man to my bones, and I’ll not change my stripes now. But I’m telling you that hanging by your principals is not going to be easy. In fact it will be downright dangerous. Your march will not succeed. Most Americans are not on your side. Don’t think for a minute that the powers-that-be don’t know your plans. There are spies in your midst right now.” He glanced toward the prisoners again. “We may lose the fight this time. We may lose the fight next time, and the next. They will try to beat us down again and again. But if we persevere in the right, we cannot help but win over the powers of evil.”

  Scott Tucker figured that he and Trent would be lucky if they didn’t get shot in the melee that would break out whe
n Duncan and his band finally showed up. Until that happened there wasn’t much either of them could do, trussed up hand and foot as they were, so Scott tried to find a comfortable seat against the tree trunk and set himself to listen to what Rob was saying to the insurgents.

  Scott had attended many of Elder Robert Gunn’s tent revivals when he was boy, and though the Elder Gunn’s son did not physically resemble him in the least, Scott was overcome with an eerie feeling of being transported back in time as he listened to Rob speak. The voice was the same; the tone, the pitch, the passion. The pure and untainted belief in the truth of his words.

  The crowd had sunken into silence when Rob delivered the I.W.W.’s decision, but enthusiasm was building again as he continued. “This war was started by the capitalists and industrialists as a way to line their pockets. If you want to win you’ve got to hit them where it hurts. In the pocketbook. They live by your toil, so quit working for the bankers and the landlords. Work for each other. Form a commune. As for the draft, no force on earth can make a man fight if he don’t want to. If they come for you, refuse to fight. If they throw your brother into prison for resisting, spread the word. See that the world knows how a real man stands up for his principles.”

  Scott could tell that Trent was outraged by the speech. The young man’s face was beet red. But almost against his will, Scott was fascinated. Rob was transported, lit from within. “Violence begets violence, brothers and sisters. If you return blow for blow, you’re no better than them who would crush you. There ain’t nothing stronger than the power of folded arms.

  “It was you who plowed this prairie, dug mines, laid the railroad. You build their buildings and grow the crops that feed them. You are not helpless. They can’t do without you. But you can’t do it alone, neither. Stand together.” He raised a fist into the air. “Solidarity! Unite! Unite! Unite!”

  The crowd was electrified. They began chanting with him, “Unite! Unite! Unite!”