Winding Stair (9781101559239)

by Jones, Douglas C.

  It was still early whan everyone began to stretch out on the floor for sleep. Louie Low Hawk brought bedding for Garret and me. We moved the table back and made pallets under one of the rear windows. The lightning was closer now, and after the lamps were out its light illuminated the windows in brilliant blue-white squares, coming sometimes slowly and flickering to full intensity only after what seemed a long time. Sometimes it crossed the entire horizon, running along like artillery fire in volley from west to east.

  Before I slept, I went to the backyard privy and, running through the rain, returned to the porch. I paused for a moment to smoke with the two Osages. In the flashes of light from the lowering clouds, I could see them sitting against the wall, their rifles across their laps, and I knew they would sleep that way, if they slept at all. At the far end of the porch, the old woman rocked, and I was sure she watched us with those brittle eyes in the hard, wrinkled face.

  “I wonder what she’s thinking,” I said softly.

  “Maybe about her son, and us after him,” Joe Mountain said, drawing on a cigarette until the red glow lighted his face and made pinpoints in his eyes.

  Looking at her, I wondered what it was like to have a son facing the hangman in Fort Smith. The thought made me shudder, and Joe Mountain laughed.

  “You better get in the house, Eben Pay. You act like you’re cold.”

  During the night, the lightning came intermittently, sometimes waking me with the noise of thunder. The rain lulled me back into an uneasy sleep. The room was hot and I slipped off my jacket and boots and laid the shoulder holster and pistol beside my pallet. The floor was hard and the Creek policemen in the room were snoring in every discordant tone imaginable. It was well past midnight when I woke from a fitful sleep and sat up on the pallet, aware of some new sound.

  In the dim flashes of lightning, I could see Burris Garret at one of the windows, looking out. As thunder rolled away, more distant now than earlier in the night, I heard a voice calling from the darkness beyond the back porch.

  “Garret! Marshal Garret! Burris Garret!”

  “What’s that?” I whispered, but Garret hushed me with a hissing sound. I felt more than saw him moving across the room to the open door, and I scrambled up and followed him, hearing that voice calling once more.

  “Garret. Hey, Burris Garret, come out.”

  I reached the porch behind him, and in the total darkness could see nothing. Rain dripped from the eaves, making a loud staccato rattle on the hardpan surface of the yard. In the next quivering light, coming from the east as the storm moved away, I saw the forms of Joe Mountain and Blue Foot crouched at one end of the porch, the barrels of their rifles silver. Garret stood at the edge of the porch in stocking feet, and I could see the heavy pistol in his hand, raised and cocked. As the light faded once more, dimly at the far end of the porch was the outline of the old woman in the rocking chair, moving gently back and forth.

  The call came once more. “Garret? Is that you?”

  I moved close behind the black marshal and he sensed me there and reached out a hand to shove me away from him, even as the next lightning flash spread the yard before us and the barn beyond, black and square, and at one corner a dark movement.

  “Get back,” Garret hissed. “Get back away from me.”

  I moved along the wall toward the Osage scouts, trying to see, and then with unexpected fury, the shooting started. The crash of gunfire cut jarringly across the faint blue glow of lightning and the sound of distant thunder, slamming against my ears, and I saw at the edge of the barn the brilliant orange slashes of black-powder guns. The window behind me shattered and there was the soft, moist splat of bullets striking the wall around me. I fell to the porch, remembering only then that my own weapon was back inside beside the pallet, and as I went down, Burris Garret began to shoot, and the two Osages, pumping long fingers of muzzle flash toward the barn. The din of it rattled my teeth, Garret’s pistol making a hollow roar and the two Winchesters barking in harder, sharper tones. The guns made quick, hot blossoms of light, outlining the figures bent forward for only an instant.

  I lay there panting, my heart pounding so hard against my ribs I thought at first I was hit. Then as suddenly as it had begun, it was over, and once more the only sound was the rumbling of thunder far away and the splatter of rain falling from the eaves in long, ditching lines along the edge of the porch. When the next lightning came, the first thing I saw was Joe Mountain and his brother at the far end of the porch, their rifles still up, motionless and waiting. Looking quickly to the barn, I saw that whatever or whoever had been at one corner was gone and now there was only the square, stark building in the pale shimmering light.

  Burris Garret was down on his face in the yard at the edge of the porch, one arm flung out to the side, the pistol still in his hand. His stocking feet were on the porch, as though hanging there by the toes, and in the same glance I saw the rocking chair, swinging back and forth, back and forth, and empty now.

  Scrambling toward the fallen marshal I shouted, and in the blackness after the fading lightning I slammed into a porch roof post and fell into the muddy yard. Men were coming out of the store, their weapons ready. Kneeling beside Burris Garret was Moma July. From the eastern horizon the storm flared up again, giving us enough light to see for a moment. Joe Mountain was there, thumbing ammunition into the magazine of his Winchester.

  “I think they gone now, Eben Pay,” he said. Across the yard, Blue Foot was running toward the barn and Joe Mountain followed him, splashing through the mud, running with long strides.

  “Let’s get the marshal inside,” I yelled, and a number of Creek policemen helped me lift him, still facedown, and carry him back across the porch and into the store. Someone kicked over a sack of dried beans in the darkness, and they rattled across the wooden floor like shod mice. Louie Low Hawk struck a match and soon there were lamps lighting the faces of the Indian men bending over the wet and muddy form. I could see no wounds at first, but when we turned him over there was an ugly hole in his shirtfront and the blood was running out, staining the fabric a deep red, spreading across his chest and stomach.

  “Get his clothes off,” I said, my hands shaking as I fumbled with the buckle on his belt. “Somebody get a doctor. Is there a doctor around here?”

  Louie Low Hawk, holding a lamp, his eyes puffed with sleep, shook his head.

  “Nearest one’s at Okmulgee.”

  “I’ll go,” Moma July said, and his voice had a strange, hard rattle.

  “No, wait. I want you here. Send someone else,” I said. “Mr. Low Hawk, get some towels and sheets. We need to make a compress.”

  There were three wounds. One in the ankle and another in the left arm, both with bones broken, but these were not as serious as the one in his lower-left rib cage. The slug had apparently hit a rib and slanted upward through a lung and was still lodged somewhere in his body. Burris Garret lay with eyes open, a calm expression on his face, but when I tried to speak to him he gave no indication that he heard. A red froth was forming at the corners of his mouth.

  Joe Mountain was in the door then, asking for a lantern.

  “They gone, Eben Pay,” he said. “But I think we hit something.”

  “You’ll make a fine target out there hauling a lantern around.”

  “They gone now,” he said, his teeth showing for an instant before he was gone again, pausing on the porch to light the lantern Louie Low Hawk had given him.

  The rain had begun to slack off and the lightning was fading into the east toward Cherokee Nation, as though it had remained only long enough to illuminate the fight. I worked frantically on the body wound, but could not stop the bleeding. Louie Low Hawk brought cotton stuffing from a comforter ripped apart and I packed the wound and bound it tightly, wrapping a sheet around the body. Two Creek policemen had immobilized the other wounds with splints made from ax handles and bound with strips of cotton bolt cloth. Through it all, Burris Garret lay without any sound except a d
eep, gurgling rasp in his breathing, his eyes still open. Low Hawk wiped the blood from his lips with a handkerchief that quickly became crimson. There was no sign of pain on Garret’s face, but the color of his skin had begun to change, the rich brown turning a pasty gray.

  We could do nothing now but wait. Joe Mountain appeared again, without the lantern, and I knew Blue Foot had it somewhere out there in the night.

  “Eben Pay, you better come look,” he said. “We found something.”

  My socks were wet but I pulled boots on over them anyway and slipped into my shoulder holster and jacket. Louie Low Hawk handed me another lighted lantern. As we crossed the muddy yard, I could hear Moma July and a number of his policemen behind me. The rain had stopped.

  At the edge of the barn where I thought I had seen movement just before the shooting started, the lantern light glistened on empty brass shells scattered on the ground. I stopped to pick them up and saw from the base of one shell that they were Winchester Center Fire .44–40s. We passed around the barn and into a lane set off on either side by a snake-rail fence. A few yards along the lane, I could see the glow of another lantern and Blue Foot beside it, his roach wet and clinging to his bald pate. He was squatting beside a huge form that I realized was a dead horse. I had never seen a dead horse before, and the thing looked monstrously big and grotesque.

  It is difficult in lantern light to distinguish colors, but this was a very dark horse with stockings on both hind feet, and he was a stallion. My heart began to pound loud enough to hear as I bent and rubbed my hand across his flank through the wet hair. There was a saddle on him and when I lifted the fender, there was the T brand showing plainly. For a moment I stared at it, then straightened and looked at Joe Mountain.

  “There’s your horse, Eben Pay,” he said. “There’s your Tar Baby.”

  It is impossible to recall what I was thinking then. There was a leaden core in my gut, partly from the chili and partly from a premonition that this case would never be finished now.

  Blue Foot had picked up a muddy rifle somewhere along the lane, and he showed me the top of the barrel where I could read the engraving. Winchester Center Fire .44–40. He worked the lever, and the chamber and magazine were empty.

  “He shot it dry,” Blue Foot said.

  “We got something else,” Joe Mountain said. “Come on.”

  We followed him between the snake rails, the lantern light shining on the fence. There were goats bleating off to one side and in the darkness their eyes reflected our passing light. We had gone only a few hundred feet when Joe Mountain and his brother stopped beside the form of a man, lying facedown in the mud. Why do they all seem to fall on their faces? I thought.

  “I told you we done some hittin’ of our own,” Joe Mountain said. There were at least two bullet holes in the back of the man’s jacket, large and ragged, and I knew these were points of exit for large-caliber slugs. He was small and his hat was gone, the short black hair plastered tight against his head. Finally, I bent down and pulled him over onto his back. Moma July, who had the second lantern now, held his light close.

  The man was wet and muddy and dead, but even so I recognized the puffy features. His eyes were open, and one was the color and texture of wet gauze. I felt as though someone had just kicked me in the stomach and I expelled a long breath, looking down into the face I had seen only once before, ages ago, when Mrs. Eagle John and Jennie’s father and those two Choctaw work-hands had still been alive.

  “And that’s your Milk Eye,” Joe Mountain said.

  Still bent over the motionless form, Moma July muttered in Creek. Then he looked at me, his eyes bright in the lantern shine.

  “It’s Rufus. It’s Rufus, all right.”

  With another exclamation in Creek, he turned and ran back toward the barn, the lantern he still held bobbing through the darkness until it disappeared.

  “What the hell . . . ?” I said, but my mind was too full and muddled to make anything more of it. I felt buffeted by physical blows, much as Big Rachael had to have felt after his bout with Dirty Jake. Joe Mountain and Blue Foot were still talking, their excitement bubbling up now that they had shown me their kill. I caught enough to understand that they had gone on down the lane until it petered out and found nothing more than a lot of horse tracks.

  Two of the Creek policemen each took Milk Eye by a foot and began to drag him toward the store, and the rest of us walked behind, the two Osages still yammering. Milk Eye’s arms were pulled up above his head and his jacket bunched around his neck as they yanked him along the ground, and before we reached the rear of the store, his shirt, too, had pulled up, revealing his slender belly and a dark puncture that still ran blood near the navel.

  Louie Low Hawk came out to meet us, swearing softly when he saw what the policemen were dragging. They dropped Milk Eye’s feet with two distinct sodden plops in the mud of the yard and left him lying there. Low Hawk said something about watching the body because of the stray dogs that were always wandering around the place.

  Burris Garret was still lying where I’d left him, but now the lamps had been moved back and someone had pulled a blanket over his face.

  “Goddamn it, goddamn it,” I said, bending close to the body and pulling back the blanket. His eyes were open and I closed them with my fingertips. His face was still warm. Everyone stood back away from me, along the walls, watching silently. I covered his face again.

  “Where’s the old woman?” I asked, my voice choking. Louie Low Hawk looked at me questioningly and shook his head.

  “What old woman?”

  “The one in the damned rocking chair. Milk Eye’s mother.”

  “I reckon she run when the shooting started.”

  “Like hell she did. She sat there through all of it. Then she was gone.”

  He shook his head again and shrugged, and his expression told me he made no connection between the old woman and the shooting.

  “I don’t know where she’s at. But, Marshal Pay, there’s something you ought to know. Burris said something just before he died.”

  “He said something?”

  “He tried to talk right after you left. I couldn’t make anything out at first. I got down close to him and he said, ‘Smoker Chubee.’ That’s what he said. He said it twice.”

  My mind was so fogged, the name made no impression on me.

  “Smoker Chubee? What does that mean?”

  “It’s a name. The man’s been working for Orthro Smith at the Furnace. Burris said, ‘Smoker Chubee. Smoker Chubee’s voice out there.’ Then he died.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “I’m positive, Marshal.”

  “And he works at the Furnace? Goddamn, man, we’ve got to get up there with this posse.” I must have sounded a little frantic because Louie Low Hawk took my arm and held me firmly.

  “Moma July’s already gone. If Smoker comes back to that Furnace, he’ll have him.”

  “Did he take men with him?” I asked, looking around the room, and from the number of them still there I already knew the answer.

  “No, he went by hisself. Don’t fret, Marshal Pay. If Smoker goes back there, Moma July will have him.”

  “Yes, and probably blow his head half off with that damned shotgun.”

  “We can’t stop it one way or another now,” Louie Low Hawk said, in the tone I suspected he would use to soothe an angry child. “You’d be too late if you started now. Whatever’s gonna happen has already happened, most likely, or will before you could get there. Why don’t you come back in the kitchen for a cup of coffee?”

  Strangely, with his mention of it, this place suddenly smelled like fresh-ground coffee. My mind darted from one thought to the next, and I seemed unable to control it. The unexpected viciousness of the night’s events was pressing down on me with smothering weight. Louie Low Hawk continued to talk, but his words meant nothing to me. I could only look down at the bundled figure of Burris Garret and think that but for his last words for me t
o get away from him as we stood on the porch together, I might be lying there, too, riddled with bullets that came from the red flashing night.

  “Mr. Low Hawk,” I cut in. “Have you got any whiskey?”

  It startled him and he drew back, and I sensed a tension in the room from my words, spoken too loudly and too harshly.

  “That’s again’ the law,” he said.

  “I’m not trying to arrest you,” I said, waving a hand impatiently. “But I need a drink and someplace to think.”

  With considerable hesitation he led me back into his living quarters, where a number of women were gathered around a cookstove jabbering in Creek, standing in their nightgowns. As we entered they were silent, watching us until Louie Low Hawk said a few sharp words and they withdrew into another part of the house, looking back at me as they went.

  I sat at the kitchen table and Louie Low Hawk brought me a half-gallon jug and a cup, explaining this was for medicine only, and not for sale. Joe Mountain came in and said something about a bad night with two men dead and a good horse besides. Then he and the Creek storekeeper left me there alone and I tried to think of what needed doing. There was no one else left to give this thing direction, but I was immobile.

  I thought of the name Smoker Chubee and knew we should mount a posse and go after him. I thought of the two Osages with their rifles out there in the darkness of that porch when the shooting started, and of Rufus Deer’s body lying spread-eagle in the yard. And I damned Oscar Schiller for not being here. But always, my thinking returned to the figure of Burris Garret, stiffening now in the next room but once bending across a fire toward me and telling me of his dreams for The Nations becoming a United States territory, a dream he would never see. I thought of his high, handsome forehead and his dark, penetrating eyes, and it became very difficult to control my emotions. I knew there should be bitterness and hatred because of what had happened, but somehow there was nothing but a total loneliness, an empty sense of frustration and inadequacy and loss. We had yet another of our Winding Stair killers now, but it was not worth the cost.