Winding Stair (9781101559239)

by Jones, Douglas C.

  “Have you had occasion to see that brand since then?”

  “Yes, sir. On a bay gelding over in the federal stables. Marshal Oscar Schiller took me over to show me the horse. It’s Thrasher stock.”

  “Besides horses, was anything else missing?”

  “Yes, sir. A black Texas hat with a pearl button on the front.”

  The hat was brought in, the one we had found on Nason Grube’s head the day we arrested him at the Cornkiller farm. It was marked for identification and George Moon said it was Thrasher’s hat that he once had worn to town and to races.

  In his cross, McRoy tried to show that there were any number of single-bitted axes like the prosecution exhibit, and that marking one was a simple procedure anyone could accomplish. He did the same thing with the Texas hat, asking George Moon to guess at the number of such hats he had seen since he’d been in Fort Smith for the trial. He got the Choctaw officer to admit that a button could be sewn on any one of them. It was all designed to put doubt in the jurors’ minds, but it served mostly to chafe Judge Parker.

  “Now, about that bay gelding,” McRoy said. “Have you ever seen Mr. Thrasher riding him?”

  “I probably have.”

  “No, Officer Moon. Have you ever seen him riding that horse?”

  “I can’t say for sure certain, but Charley Oskogee who lives just down the road says—”

  “That will be all, Officer Moon.”

  Evans immediately called Charley Oskogee, who identified ax, hat, and the horse in the federal stable as having belonged to Thrasher. McRoy let him go without cross-examination. Charley Oskogee left the courtroom, seeming disappointed that his time on the stand had been so short.

  Before Evans could call another witness, one of the jurors raised his hand, looking embarrassed and red-faced.

  “See what he wants,” Judge Parker snapped.

  The bailiff went to the jury box and listened to the whispers of the juror and came back to the bench, smiling. He whispered to Judge Parker, who looked more and more annoyed, scowling at the jury. Then he slapped a palm against the green felt of the bench and declared a ten-minute recess. People in the courtroom began to rise and stretch, and there was a sudden burst of subdued conversation until Parker’s bellow caught them with mouths open, staring at the bench.

  “You people stay seated and keep still,” he shouted. “You stay right there until this jury is out of here. I don’t want anyone talking to this jury or interfering with them. You marshals take this jury out to the toilets and then to the jury room and keep those halls cleared. Once they’re in the jury room, you people can go do whatever it is needs doing. But I don’t want anyone near that jury.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Each day at noon, a Missouri Pacific passenger train departed Fort Smith for Little Rock. During that first recess I very nearly left the compound to pack and take it, to turn my back on everything. But I recalled my father telling me that if I wanted a place in criminal law, there would be situations unpleasant to a degree almost beyond bearing. I determined that my repugnance should not defeat me.

  Testimony had begun when I returned to the courtroom and found Joe Mountain in my seat, grinning and once more wearing that outlandish plaid suit. He shoved people along the pew, squeezing them tight together to make a place for me beside him.

  “I thought you might not come back, Eben Pay,” the big Osage whispered.

  “You’re too perceptive for your own good, Joe.” His long eyeteeth gleamed as the grin stretched across his flat face.

  Oscar Schiller was on the stand. He had on a seersucker suit a little too big for his small frame. On the floor beneath the witness chair was the palmetto hat. He had combed his hair with water and it lay plastered to his skull, parted carefully in the middle. There were tiny red marks on his cheeks where he had cut himself shaving. He was holding an envelope and a slip of paper in his hands.

  “This is a letter we found in Johnny Boins’s room in Eureka Springs after we arrested him,” he said. “It’s addressed to him. Mailed on the KATY at Muskogee, Creek Nation, postmarked May twenty-first.”

  “Read the letter, Marshal,” Evans said.

  “It says, ‘J.B. A man named C found the place. Horse and girl. Meet me F.S. on 3 day of next month.’ And then there’s a pencil drawing of a deer’s head.”

  “The three day of next month. What month would that be?”

  “June. The third of June.”

  “Do you recall that date for any reason?”

  “Yes. It was the day Mr. Eben Pay got to Fort Smith to begin work with the prosecutor’s office.”

  “Now, what do you make of all these initials? This J.B. and this C and this F.S.? And the deer’s head?”

  “Objection,” McRoy said.

  “Sustained.”

  “Very well, Your Honor,” Evans responded. “I ask this letter be placed in evidence.”

  “Object,” McRoy said. “Anyone could have written that note.”

  “A postmark speaks for itself,” Evans said. “But I can show chain of custody.”

  “You should have done that first, Mr. Evans. Proceed with it,” Judge Parker said.

  “Marshal Schiller, what did you do with this letter after you took it from Johnny Boins’s room?”

  “I’ve had it with me, in my custody, until a few minutes ago when I handed it to the bailiff.”

  “Your Honor?” Evans asked.

  “The letter is admitted in evidence.” Evans passed it to the jury and they began to hand it from one to the next.

  Evans introduced the brass cartridge cases we had found in the Thrasher kitchen and the flattened slug Oscar Schiller had cut from under the skin of John Price’s chest after we’d carried his body from the hogpen. McRoy objected but Parker allowed all of it to be introduced, once more after Schiller testified that the items had been in his possession since leaving the scene. Evans produced the ax once more, Schiller identified it, and it was introduced over McRoy’s objection. The railing before the jury was becoming cluttered with exhibits.

  Then the Texas pearl hat. But McRoy won on that, explaining to the court that there were likely at least ten men in the room who owned one like it and that anybody could sew on a button. Even if the prosecution could prove chain of custody from the Cornkiller farm, where we had taken it, McRoy contended, we had not placed it at the murder scene. Parker sustained him. Once all these exhibits were disposed of, Evans returned to his direct examination.

  “Marshal Schiller, when you arrested Skitty Cornkiller, did he say anything to you about this crime?”

  “While we were talking, one of us accused him of complicity in the Thrasher killings, one of them being Mrs. Thrasher. He denied it and said Mrs. Thrasher was still alive. Words to that effect.”

  “Had you been looking for Mrs. Thrasher?”

  “The Choctaw police had.”

  “Objection,” McRoy shouted, in a hot temper from all the wrangling over prosecution exhibits.

  “Marshal,” Parker said. “Do you have knowledge of that fact?”

  “Yes, sir. We found no trace of Mrs. Thrasher at the scene. Our posse looked for her immediately after, but until Cornkiller mentioned it, we had no idea whether she was alive or dead.”

  “The objection is overruled,” Parker said. “Move along, Mr. Evans.”

  “Marshal, did you conduct a search of the Cornkiller farm?”

  “I did.”

  “And did you find anything that might connect the people there with the crimes at the Thrasher farm?”

  “We found a bay gelding with a T brand. We brought the horse to the federal stable in this city, and he has been there ever since.”

  “And to whom have you shown this horse?”

  “I took George Moon and Charley Oskogee over there the day of the grand jury hearing on this case and they identified the horse.”

  “Marshal, did you eventually find Mrs. Thrasher?”

  “I did. And like Cornkiller had said, sh
e was alive. We got information from Mr. Pay that during an interview with the Thrasher girl, she had mentioned Mrs. Thrasher had a brother living near McAlester. That’s where I found her, in hiding.”

  Evans turned the witness over to the defense, and McRoy began relentlessly, still irritated by some of the judge’s rulings, I suspected. It seemed a tactical error to me. I would have led Schiller along in some more friendly vein, hoping to trap him. But it was soon apparent that it probably made little difference. Oscar Schiller was a cold and calculating witness, a professional at this kind of thing and confident in that knowledge. As McRoy bent toward him, firing questions rapidly, Schiller’s eyes remained calm and unblinking behind the thick glasses.

  “When you talked with Skitty Cornkiller, did you warn him that anything he said might be used against him?”

  “He knew he was under arrest.”

  “You have a reputation for bringing in your man, don’t you?”

  “I usually get whoever I’m after.”

  “And you’re proud of that reputation?”

  “It’s what they pay me for.”

  “You do it so well, in fact, that no matter whether the man is the right one or not, you bring him in.”

  “I arrest them. The court decides whether they’re guilty.”

  McRoy was standing well back from the witness stand, his voice deep and resonant. It was in sharp contrast to the gravelly replies of Oscar Schiller.

  “Do you carry railroad passes with you?”

  “I do.”

  “And don’t you collect travel expenses for witnesses, prisoners, and your own posse that actually come to Fort Smith on those passes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Isn’t that in violation of your oath?”

  “I take no money fees from anyone. That would be in violation of my oath.”

  “And don’t you take supplies from various stores in The Nations, and use horses from various livery stables there, and take other services from people who are afraid of you, and never pay for them?”

  “Your Honor, I’m going to have to object to all this,” Evans said easily from his chair. “Defense counsel is giving testimony. He’s not cross-examining the witness. Besides, it’s all irrelevant.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Parker said. “Now, Mr. McRoy, you’re allowed wide latitude in cross, but the way this is going I’ll have to disqualify you and put you on the witness stand under oath. Besides, the United States prosecutor is correct. It is irrelevant. The objection is sustained.”

  “I have nothing more for this honorable man,” McRoy spat.

  “Now, Mr. McRoy,” Judge Parker said, thrusting his head forward and tapping his glasses rapidly on the bench. “I won’t have these asides any longer, either. You know better than that.”

  Evans called Moma July, and the little Creek policeman testified to finding the pistol in Smoker Chubee’s quarters at Smith’s Furnace. When Evans produced the weapon from a brown bag that had been lying on the prosecutor’s desk throughout the trial, McRoy objected.

  “Your Honor, we’ve had a deluge of material the prosecution has introduced here. It has reached the point of absurdity. Those shell casings and that bullet, they could have been fired from any weapon, anytime, anyplace. Now this pistol. Everyone here knows there are likely hundreds of pistols like this one within a ten-mile radius of where we sit.”

  “Your Honor,” Evans countered, “I have been interrupted, not for the first time, before I have completed my identification of an exhibit which I introduce here to show strong circumstance.”

  “Then complete your identification. Mr. Evans,” Judge Parker said.

  “Officer July, describe the weapon you took from Smoker Chubee’s room.”

  “Well, when I took it out of Smoker’s place, I said to myself I ain’t ever seen a gun like this one. It was fine-tuned, like a clock, like it was hand-tooled. Easy trigger and smooth hammer action. The blue was good on it and the walnut butts were deep-checked to keep it from slipping in a man’s hand. The initials SC are burned into the grip. It’s a better-took-care-of gun than any I ever saw.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  Moma July pulled a small dog-eared notepad from a coat pocket and frowned as he leafed through it.

  “I took the number on it. When I took it, I read the number and wrote it down. It was 3-0-6-4-3,” he said.

  Evans passed the pistol to Moma July.

  “Please read the serial number on this weapon.”

  Moma July turned the pistol butt up and read the number from the frame just forward of the trigger guard. It was the same.

  “And what caliber is this weapon?”

  “It’s a .45,” Moma July said. “A .45 single-action, a Colt.”

  The big revolver was placed on the jury railing along with the other items there. Evans took the note we’d found in Johnny Boins’s room and handed it to the witness.

  “Let me show you this letter,” he said. “Do you observe the drawing at the bottom?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you ever seen this symbol before?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s the way Rufus Deer signed everything.”

  “You knew Rufus Deer?”

  “All my life.”

  “Do many people in The Nations sign letters with such symbols?”

  “A few do. I’ve never seen one like this except when Rufus signed it.”

  “And when did you last see Rufus Deer?”

  “The night Marshal Burris Garret was killed over in Creek Nation. Rufus had been shot dead in that fuss.”

  “And when did you arrest Smoker Chubee?”

  “About two hours later.”

  Evans introduced the grand jury indictment against Smoker Chubee, charging that he and Rufus Deer, deceased, had killed Burris Garret.

  “Was Smoker Chubee convicted of this offense?”

  “Yes, sir, in this court.”

  “Your witness, Mr. McRoy,” Evans said.

  McRoy sat at his table, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. His eyes were closed and he was frowning.

  “No questions,” he said.

  “Call your next witness,” Judge Parker said.

  Evans, still on his feet, turned toward the jail corridor.

  “I call Mrs. Thomas Thrasher.”

  All eyes followed her small figure across the room to the witness stand. She was wearing a long, loosely fitting dress of bleached muslin; on her head, holding back pitch-black hair, was a purple scarf knotted beneath her chin. I had seen many Choctaw women wearing such scarves, and it somehow gave her the look of a Greek vineyard worker. Her face was composed and rather handsome. When she was sworn, she looked at Judge Parker with wide, dark eyes. She had come here, Oscar Schiller had told me, to relate her story to Judge Parker, and I wondered if until this moment she had fully realized it would have to be told before a room crowded with white people.

  “Madam, what is your name and where do you live?” Evans asked.

  “I’m Mrs. Thomas Thrasher and I live in Winding Stair Mountains, in the Choctaw Nation.” Her voice was soft and the words were spoken slowly and deliberately. I suspected she had been part of those reading-aloud evenings Jennie had told me about. Wherever she had learned her English, she had learned it well.

  “Mrs. Thrasher, I know it is hard for you to come here and tell of the terrible events that led to your husband’s death. I know it will not be an easy task. But I ask you now to relate for us what happened that day in June on your farm in Winding Stair.”

  She hesitated only for a moment, her eyes going across the room, seeing the gape-mouthed faces. After that first look, she held her gaze away from the crowd, as though she might be pretending that no others were there.

  “It was on June seventh,” she began. “I was below the house, planting some flowers, when I heard my husband call Jennie, my stepdaughter. He had a funny sound to his voice. I went up the breezeway through the house. I started along the br
eezeway from the back porch toward the front when my husband came out of Jennie’s bedroom. I didn’t see her. She’d been in the kitchen getting something ready to cook. She was a good cook. My husband had taught her when she was a little girl—”

  She seemed to be wandering, her eyes gone vacant. Evans interrupted her and she gave a little start, coming back to the moment.

  “Yes, Mrs. Thrasher, and what happened then?”

  “I started towards my husband, there in the breezeway, and he grabbed my arm and said I’d have to hide. But before we could get into the other bedroom, this man came up on the front porch and saw us. That man,” she said, and pointed to Smoker Chubee. She stopped again, looking at Chubee’s face, and he sat easily at the defense table, his jaw working slowly on his tobacco. His eyes were flat, passionless.

  “Yes, Mrs. Thrasher?” Evans urged gently.

  “I hadn’t heard any horses, but that dark man was there, and he was grinning at us and there was a big black pistol in his pants. He said to me and my husband, ‘Come on out to the front, folks. You’ve got company.’ He said it quiet, but I was afraid, the way he looked at us.

  “Me and my husband went out front, that dark man behind us. They were there on horses. Four of them. Those three sitting there”—and she pointed again, her finger stopping at each of the defendants—“and another one, a little man I thought was a Creek, with a white eye. I heard these other men call him Rufus. I heard them call the dark one with the big pistol Smoker. I don’t remember the other names.”

  She paused, bending her head down as she swallowed. Evans moved to his desk and poured a glass of water from a pitcher. She took the glass in both hands and sipped it slowly. When she had finished drinking, Evans took the glass from her and she turned to Judge Parker, who was looking down at her sympathetically.

  “I hope I can tell it all, Judge.”

  “You just take your time, Mrs. Thrasher, and tell it as though only you and I are here,” he said. “It’s hard, but it has to be told.”

  “Yes, sir. The men on the horses were all grinning at us. They had bottles and were drinking. The one called Rufus said their horses needed water. That’s when I saw one of them was the Creek whiskey peddler that had come by the place sometime before. Then my husband said they were welcome to water and they all got down. That colored man took the horses to the well and drew up a bucket. He was laughing and he fell down twice. The others just came up on the porch and stood around us, grinning, and they didn’t say anything.