TWELVE
By dawn, the sky was clear and the sun came hot and blistering. Before the people of the community began to gather, some of the men in our posse washed the mud from Milk Eye Rufus Deer’s face and laid his body on a door unhinged from the barn. They took the rifle we had found in the lane and put it under his folded arms, and one of them with a Kodak box camera snapped his photograph. His eyes were still open.
As though by some prearranged signal, when this ceremony was completed, the people appeared. There were a few whites, but mostly there were Creeks, and they stood in a large circle, well back from the small body still lying on the door, but now without the rifle. That had been handed over to Joe Mountain for safekeeping until our return to Fort Smith.
Their young came with them, and their dogs, all held back a respectful distance. I could see no sign of mourning on their faces. It seemed they came to view some ghastly sideshow that passed only infrequently and wanted the opportunity to tell their grandchildren they had been there. Not a word was spoken. The only sounds were the bleatings of Louie Low Hawk ’s goats behind the barn and somewhere to the west a mourning dove making his low signal that the rain had passed. With the exception of a few men wearing red or yellow neck scarves, they were a colorless group, a study in gray and faded blue or tan work clothes bleached even more by the harsh rising sunlight.
The Creek policemen allowed the people to have their look, and then lifted the body from its resting place and wrapped it in blankets secured with heavy hemp rope.
After they had Milk Eye’s body laid out on the porch, they came inside for Burris Garret. I had some inclination to protest, but decided against it, for he was after all a part of these people although of a different color. They took the cover off him and laid him on the porch near Milk Eye, and it occurred to me that one of the purposes of these long porches was for laying out the dead. Still wordlessly, the people passed by the body of the marshal, and a few of the men took off their hats for a moment. Soon it was over, and they began to disappear, each going back to kitchen or barn or field to begin the day’s work. The policemen wrapped Garret as they had Milk Eye.
I heard a wagon coming near and soon it drew up at one end of the porch. A small man, looking very old but somehow familiar, got down and, with two policemen helping, lifted the body of Milk Eye and slid it into the back of the wagon. I knew this was Old Man Deer, and on the wagon seat, her hat off now and the shawl pulled up over her head like a heavy veil, was the old woman. She sat looking straight ahead, her face hidden under the shawl, her hands folded in her lap.
When the body was safely stowed, the old man came back to the porch and stood for a moment staring at the mummylike form of Burris Garret. Watching from a rear window, I could see no expression on his face, no sign of emotion. Then he went back to the wagon and climbed to the box and whipped his mule, driving across the backyard and leaving deep ruts in the still-wet ground.
Louie Low Hawk was writing out what amounted to a coroner’s report, another of his duties in this place, where I had learned he was not only a member of the school board but mayor as well. He told me he would send it on to Okmulgee. Two men killed, he wrote in laborious English, one the result of ambush, the other at the hands of federal officers from Fort Smith in defense of their lives. After he finished, he wrote a second one for me, identical to the first, signed it, and sealed it with red wax, into which he imprinted his initials.
“We don’t know whether it was Burris or your Indian scouts who hit Rufus,” he said. “It could have been both. But now, with the family taking Rufus home to bury, we’ll never know. And it’s just as good. I’d as soon not mention that maybe the ones who helped kill him were Osages. Some of my people might not like that. So I just said federal officers.”
“I didn’t see any signs of grief over his death out there.”
“No. Our people weren’t proud of him and the things he did, and a lot of them were afraid of him. But he’s still one of us. I’d as soon leave it uncertain who actually hit him.”
During all of this the Okmulgee doctor had arrived. He was a white man who had known Burris Garret for years and spoke highly of him as a peace officer and as a man. We discussed disposition of the body. I knew there was no money available from Fort Smith for the burial, and I gave the doctor twenty-five dollars to help with the expenses. He assured me it would be handled in the best possible manner. He would take the body back with him to Okmulgee, along with Louie Low Hawk’s report of the incident, and some of the Creek policemen would ride with him as a guard of honor, more or less. My impression that Burris Garret had been well liked in this country was confirmed when Louie Low Hawk said that if Smoker Chubee was caught, he’d best not be kept around the Corners too long. Some of the local citizens might try to take the law into their own hands.
I was still hesitant about going out after the man whose voice Garret had recognized. There was a pattern of confusion in my thoughts. I wasn’t sure I had the authority to mount a posse. Besides, having seen Oscar Schiller work, I had learned that one must plan ahead clearly in such dealings, and I couldn’t escape the idea that for lack of that, Burris Garret had paid with his life. At any rate, my mind was not functioning clearly.
As it turned out, the matter solved itself. Shortly after the doctor and his escort of Creeks departed, someone ran in to say two horsemen were coming down the lane behind Louie Low Hawk ’s barn. One of them was Moma July. I felt great relief, but no personal pride, because things were developing not because of any plan but in spite of my indecisiveness.
They rode round the corner of the barn and into the yard, Moma July in the rear with his shotgun across his saddle. Leading was a dark-faced man manacled and hatless, his black hair swept back from his face. As they came up, I saw it was a deeply pockmarked face, but otherwise strikingly exotic and well formed. His skin was the color of ebony, yet his features were Asiatic with a finely formed nose, narrow and straight between prominent cheekbones and over a wide mouth and clean-shaven jaw. His eyes were black, set wide apart and slightly slanted under brows so fine they appeared to have been plucked. I supposed him to be under forty, rather heavy in body but tall enough to take the weight without any appearance of obesity. His glance swept across the yard and the Creek policemen waiting there.
As they drew rein, Moma July searched out Joe Mountain among us and nodded.
“You Osage boys hit another horse last night. This one.” And he waved the muzzle of his shotgun at the man mounted before him. “He come to the Furnace riding a little bay shot all to hell. Hadn’t been for that, he’d have beat me there and been gone.”
Louie Low Hawk was close behind me as I waited on the edge of the porch, and he said, “That’s him. That’s Smoker. I told you Moma July would get him if he was there to be got.”
Creek policemen moved around the horses and pulled Smoker Chubee down, roughly shoving him forward to stand in front of me. He seemed unaware of them and their hard hands on him, watching me alone now, his black eyes hot as Oscar Schiller’s blue ones were cold. When I stepped off the porch, our faces were on a level. He stood there with his back straight, his head up, and a breeze that had started up from the west stirred his hair and dropped a shock of it across his face. It was longer than I had supposed and partly covered his eyes.
“Are you Smoker Chubee?” I asked.
“I am,” he said, and his voice was deep and clear. He stared directly back at me.
“I arrest you for the murder of United States Marshal Garret.” A sardonic smile crossed his mouth for a moment before he spoke.
“On what evidence?”
“We’ll make that clear to you in Fort Smith,” I said, and it was beginning to anger me.
“Have you got a warrant?”
“No, but I’m arresting you on strong probability. And it occurs to me that you are likely a man wanted for another crime in the Choctaw Nation. Done in company with your friend Rufus Deer.”
“I’ve never
been in the Choctaw Nation,” he said, still smiling.
“How long have you known Rufus Deer?” I asked. He shrugged. “Well, it’s long enough for you to be known in these parts. Where were you the first week of June?”
“What authority have you got for asking me all this horseshit?”
“I’m a special deputy marshal from Fort Smith.”
“Special for what?”
“That’s none of your concern. Would you rather I rode off from here and left you for a Creek court?”
Smoker Chubee looked around at the men standing near us, all watching closely. He did it almost casually.
“No, I think I’ll take my chances with Parker.”
“All right. Where were you the first week of June?” I asked.
“I don’t keep track of such things,” he said. “Probably in Seminole country or maybe up in the Cherokee Outlet. How the hell would I know?”
“It may be to your best interests to prove you were somewhere other than the Choctaw Nation during that week.” I took the last of the Winding Stair John Doe warrants from my jacket and served it on him and he stood listening to me, smiling, looking squarely into my eyes. His teeth in that dark face seemed the whitest I had ever seen. There was something disconcerting about his manner, something at once infuriating yet admirable. Johnny Boins had been flamboyant. Smoker Chubee was confident and direct, almost insolent. He acted as though we were all some lower form of life beneath his serious consideration.
Moma July had brought back two weapons. One was a Marlin rifle chambered for .44–40 ammunition he said Chubee had in his saddle boot. The other was a Colt single-action .45 found at the Furnace. It was a handcrafted weapon of outstanding workmanship, with walnut grips into one of which the initials SC had been carefully burned. I had never seen such an excellent weapon in this part of the country, where such things were generally taken for granted and treated like plows or empty coffee cans, thrown about carelessly on woodshed or pantry shelves. I concluded that Smoker Chubee was a thoroughly dangerous man, the most dangerous we had taken, and it amazed me that it had been done so easily by one stocky little Creek policeman.
Everything moved quickly then, because Moma July and Louie Low Hawk made it so. It was obvious that they felt to keep Chubee here long would be to invite some ugly reaction from the local citizens who had held Burris Garret in such high esteem.
“And besides,” Low Hawk said, “there will be some who think he ought to be tried in a Creek court because all the people killed were members of the Creek Nation.”
“But a federal marshal was murdered, and that’s reason enough to take him to Fort Smith,” I said.
“You let him get into the hands of a Creek court,” Moma July said, “and you won’t have anything to take to Parker but a dead man.”
“He’ll be tried in a hurry—you can count on it. Anybody who kills one of Parker’s marshals gets quick attention.”
“You get your subpoenas for witnesses back here, and we’ll be ready to testify,” Louie Low Hawk said.
“Yes, and keep your eye on this Orthro Smith at the Furnace. We want him.”
“He’ll be there.”
Moma July rode with us a short distance, along with a number of other Creek policemen. But he said he would like to get to Okmulgee and see to it the funeral was done properly. We paused along a row of thorny hawthorn trees bordering a cultivated field, seeking such little shade as there was in the growing heat.
“Garret never had a wife,” Moma July said. He took off his hat and wiped his face with a red bandanna. “But he’s got brothers and sisters and an old mother. I’d like to be there. These men can ride on with you.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. So long as Joe Mountain and his brother were with me, I felt confident in getting our prisoner back to Fort Smith.
“All right. Now, if I was you, I wouldn’t go to Muskogee. The people there knew Burris, too. Slip around it to the north and head for Fort Gibson into the Cherokee Nation. Get clear of Creek country fast and catch your train at Fort Gibson.”
“What about your horses?”
“Leave ’em at Fort Gibson. They’re Creek horses and the police there will hold ’em until I send someone to pick ’em up in a day or so.”
“There’s a thing I wish you’d do for me,” I said.
“I’ll do it.”
“Get a telegram off to Oscar Schiller. Send it to George Moon, at Hatchet Hill, down in Choctaw. Tell him we’ve killed Milk Eye and we’ve got another Winding Stair suspect we’re bringing in to Fort Smith.”
“Yes. I’ll do it.”
“And tell him Marshal Garret’s been killed.”
“I’ll do that, too.”
I held out my hand to him and he took it.
“Moma,” I said, “you’ve done a lot for us.”
For a moment he stared at me, and I thought he was about to smile, but then he shrugged and took his hand away and slapped his hat back on his head. I watched him ride off and thought about him dashing out into the night alone after a man who had just proven his deadliness. It was a strange sensation, this admiration for a man with whom I had so little in common, and had he appeared at my home in Saint Louis, I suspected my mother would feed him at the back door and send him quickly away.
We rode on for a while and Joe Mountain turned to me and grinned.
“You’re gonna make one damned fine marshal, Eben Pay.”
“I have no intention of continuing in the work,” I said. “When this is all finished, I’m going back to Missouri and take my bar examinations.”
But I recognized it for a rare compliment and found myself liking it very much. And I thought of Oscar Schiller. I knew he would view the killing of Milk Eye Rufus Deer as a mixed blessing. Because the little Yuchi’s family had taken the body, we would not have to pay his burial expenses out of travel money, as was usually the case. But neither would anyone collect the reward money offered by the Creek chief. There was a stipulation in that about a conviction in court, and now Milk Eye would never get his day in court.
The sun lifted before us as we rode northeast into its glaring light, headed for the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas railroad bridge across the Arkansas outside Muskogee. Only a few miles beyond that would be the Cherokee Nation and Fort Gibson and the tracks of the Kansas and Arkansas Valley line into Fort Smith.
At first, there were gnats and flies whipping around our sweating faces, but soon the heat was enough to drive them to shade. We rode the edges of plowed fields and through clover pastures where cattle grazed. On the higher ground, there were patches of hop hornbeam, the ironwood trees used by the old prairie and plains tribes for lances. Along the small streams we crossed were black willows and redbud trees, their lavender blooms long since replaced by the delicate heart-shaped leaves. All around us were meadowlarks and quail, and above us the turkey vultures and Cooper’s hawks, hunting.
We pushed the horses hard, but had to stop often to breathe them in the heat. Mostly, we were silent, each man with his own thoughts. For myself, it seemed incredible that only a few hours before, when we’d found the dead Tar Baby behind Louie Low Hawk’s barn, I had despaired of ever settling the Winding Stair case. Now we were going into Fort Smith with the last member of the gang. I was sure, and it was finished. Except for the trying.
At the north end of the federal courthouse was the room where Judge Isaac Parker sat in judgment. It ran the entire width of the building, with polished oak floors and a high whitewashed ceiling. To those newspapermen and other visitors from the East who came to watch this famous tribunal in action, it probably was a great surprise to find that it looked like any other federal courtroom of the era. There was nothing of the raw frontier associated with so many justices and courtrooms of the Old West. It was marked by order and formality. It was a federal court, governed in its conduct by the laws of Congress and, after 1889, subject to appellate review by the Supreme Court of the United States.
As on
e entered from the main hall the spectator section was to the right, with high windows behind looking out onto the courthouse compound, the churchlike pews polished bright from the trouser seats of those hundreds who at one time or another had sat there watching justice as it operated in Fort Smith. At the center of the room was a sturdy wooden railing, setting off the official from the unofficial areas. Beyond that railing were tables for the defense and the United States attorney, in front of which was the clerk’s desk. Along the far wall and next to a small fireplace was the jury box, its twelve swivel chairs made of oak, as were all the court furnishings. Before the jury box was the witness stand, and beside that, a small table used by the court reporter.
Dominating the end of the room was the judge’s bench, a high bar with a green felt top, and behind that and the leather upholstered chair spread a back wall of wood that looked like a massive headboard on a four-poster bed. To the right stood a standard with the national colors. Throughout the room, placed strategically, were huge brass cuspidors polished to a high shine.
Opposite the jury box was a door that led into a corridor and thence into the jury room and the judge’s chambers and finally back into the main hall. Directly across the hall at that point was the entrance to an open passage that terminated at its far end in the jail. Defendants marched along this route to their day in court. If they were considered dangerous, they were shackled and wore leg-irons. Escorted by a small army of deputy marshals, they clanked past the end of the main hall, where citizens gathered to gape at them, on past the judge’s chambers and the jury room, and out into the courtroom. It was a short and dreadful walk.
Sessions of court were attended by a number of deputy marshals, one of whom acted as bailiff, and others who were charged with guarding the defendants. There were always a few in the spectator section, watching the people who were watching the proceedings. At the door were two more of them, making a second search for weapons as the people filed in, the first having been made by another pair at the outside door to the main hall.
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