Stringer and the Oil Well Indians

by Lou Cameron

  He gulped a mouthful of beer and added, “We already drink as much as we need to and we can’t see paying taxes at all.”

  Stringer chuckled and said, “At the rate you boys are going, I see a time ahead when you’ll have all the privileges of a white man and we’ll still be supporting you, tax free. But if we could stick to the here and now, I’ll ask if they have a file on mixed marriages at the BIA. I doubt that’s anything anyone is out to hide in any case. To make oil deals with Indians, even a crook would need to make that angle a matter of public record.”

  The barmaid suggested, “Bigamy might be worth hiding, seeing how a wicked gal could marry a Creek, an Osage and a Cherokee in turn without the bans winding up in one file.”

  Stringer nodded thoughtfully and said, “It sure could be profitable. I’ve been told by two different folk that nobody expects a white wife-in-name-only to live on any reservation, and a really brazen gal could hope to get away with it by changing her name each time an Indian changed her name for her.”

  He sipped the last of his beer and decided, “I doubt crooks brazen as that would be worried about an out of town newspaper man, though. For how could I prove such flummery even with all the papers spread on this very bar? There’s no way I could catch the same gal in bed with three widely separated oil well Indians. I just can’t see anyone dumb enough to file the same name on more than one marriage certificate. So, if there’s anything on paper they’re afraid I’ll see, it has to be something else, and it has to be recorded right here in Tulsa. That’s where they’ve been shooting at me, not off at some reservation headquarters.”

  The gal asked him if he’d like another beer. He told her he would but that he didn’t have time. Then he left her flirting with Jake Wetumpka and headed for the local BIA office.

  Along the way he spied a brand new Buick buckboard, painted ivory white and parked in front of the Pronghorn Saloon. He stuck his head through the bat wings just long enough to see the place was almost deserted, save for the barkeep and a red-nosed old bum who looked neither prosperous nor strong enough to crank a Buick. The barkeep was staring at him, too. So Stringer asked, “Might Walter Bluefeather be in the back?” to which the surly barkeep replied, “Nope. Didn’t know he was in town.”

  Stringer thanked him anyway, and ducked back outside. There was no law saying only a rich Osage was allowed to buy a brand-new gas buggy, even a white one. But Bluefeather’s Stanley had been that same shade of ivory and he had said he meant to buy a new Panard or Buick. Stringer strode on until he came to a smaller doorway leading up to the offices on the top floors of the business block. He read the name plates over the mail slots just inside. He blinked and muttered, “Now, that’s sort of interesting.” as he made out “James Lacey, Attorney at Law.”

  Then he strode on. There was no proof that parked Buick back there belonged to Walter Bluefeather and, even if it did, there were other offices above the Osage might have gone up to. But Lacey did seem to be the only lawyer above the Pronghorn and old Walter had said he had a white lawyer. If Lacey was a local lawyer on retainer to Sinclair Oil, there was no reason he might not deal with local clients on the side. So Stringer told himself that even if he was guessing right instead of building mountains out of molehills, there was nothing wrong with Bluefeather having Lacey as his lawyer.

  Then he stopped to get his bearings as he rolled another smoke, muttering, “Bullshit. There’s a conflict of interests if Sinclair Oil hired Lacey to look after their interests here, and he made a deal for another client with Standard Oil. Bluefeather said his lawyer was his brother-in-law as well. So just what the hell is going on, here?”

  He didn’t want to go all the way back to the hotel. So he lit up and moved on until he spied a door sign that contained the blue bell of the telephone company. He entered the dinky drug store and ordered a Coca Cola at the marble counter before he asked the old gent in charge if he could have a look at their Tulsa telephone directory. The old man brought it to him. So he got to smoke, sip soda through a straw, and look up Lacey’s home address at the same time. He saw it was a good ten blocks away. Close enough to walk, but not close enough for Lacey to be apt to stroll home for lunch from his office over the Pronghorn.

  The half-mile hike from the drug store to the Lacey home on a dusty street that would be tree shaded once those spindly elm saplings grew up gave Stringer time to think up and discard a dozen lines of bullshit. He doubted he could pass for a Fuller Brush man or a fire inspector in his faded denims and oil spotted Stetson, even if he got rid of his gun rig. So when he strode up on the porch of the mustard-painted three story house he just twisted the door bell bold as brass and when a sleepy-eyed young red-haired gal wearing a bathrobe came to the door he took off his hat and said, “Morning, Ma’am. I’m here to see Lawyer Lacey, if he’s home.”

  The girl yawned and said, “His office is way over to Main Street. I doubt he’ll be home before six, if then. I hope it’s not important, sir. He said something at breakfast about being out of the office most of the day. You might still catch him there, if you hurry, though.”

  Stringer stayed put as he smiled down at her and said, “I fear I just might have. I came here when I noticed he didn’t seem to be there. They call me Stringer MacKail. I’m a newspaper man, working for the San Francisco Sun. I was with your, ah, brother? when that oil well blew up the other day. I see by the smoke that’s still rising above town that it’s still burning. So I’ve been trying to interview him about his plans to put it out.”

  She yawned again and said, “You’d best come into the parlor. I don’t like to be seen in public like this. You say you want to write about us in the newspapers?”

  He said he surely did. It still surprised him a mite to see how most folk reacted to the thought of seeing their names in print. As she led him from the door to the front parlor she said her maiden name was Victoria Lacey and began to spell it for him before he assured her he knew how to spell Victoria Lacey. She sat him on a davenport and joined him there as she began to pin up the red hair she’d let down for sleeping while explaining, “It’s the last name people spell wrong, without the e. I can tell you as much as Jim may know about that blowout. The company’s sending a team of experts to cap that well. They’d hardly expect a lawyer or even their regular drillers, here, to deal with such a mess. Jim told me it was all the fault of a foreman the company fired. They suspect he got the job with phony references.”

  Stringer got out his note book and went through the motions of taking down things he already knew in shorthand, as he tried not to admire her chest. It wasn’t easy, thanks to the way her robe was hanging as she pinned hair with both elbows up like that. He said, “I heard they ran Twain out of Tulsa. I didn’t know that was how come. Might you know who hired him in the first place, Ma’am?”

  She sighed and said, “My brother, Jim, sort of. I mean he’s sort of my brother and sort of hired that big fake when the old head driller quit and the head office asked Jim if he knew any top drillers here in Tulsa. It wasn’t Jim’s fault. That Twain gent came highly recommended by a wildcatter Jim had done some business with.”

  Stringer made a serious note in his pad as he asked, “Might we be talking about a wildcatter called Tex Roberts?” To which she answered, “Why, yes, now that you mention it. Do you know him?”

  He said, “Not exactly. An Osage I know recommended him highly for sinking some oil wells on his spread. Might I ask how come you call Lawyer Lacey your sort of brother and gave Lacey as your maiden name, Miss Victoria?”

  She dropped her hands listlessly to her lap, spoiling the view and looking rather sad for a Gibson Girl as she explained, “Jim is really my half-brother. We had different mommas and our daddy run off on both of ’em. So we grew up separate when his momma remarried rich and mine didn’t.”

  He nodded understandingly and said, “I see you got back together at last,” and she replied, “I guess we did. Jim looked me up six or seven months ago, back East, and said he�
��d just love to have me join him out here in the land of opportunity. I guess it was all right. He’s been ever so kind to me.”

  He said, “Old Jim was a good sport about giving me a ride back to town the other day, too. You say you both started out named Lacey?”

  She looked away as she murmured, “I still think of myself as Miss Victoria Lacey. Jim says it’s just for now, until they get about to changing some silly laws. He says he can get me divorced with a few strokes of the pen and a wink at a judge he knows. But I still say I’ll be switched with snakes before I’ll ever let anyone call me Victoria Bluefeather! Isn’t that about the dumbest name you’ve ever heard?”

  Stringer tried not to smile as he told her, “Mayhaps they saw no need for you to use the name in polite society, either. It was just to get power of attorney for your half-brother as the in-law of Walter Bluefeather, right?”

  She nodded and swung her big green eyes to meet his as she said, defiantly, “I swear to you I married that savage in name only! If that’s what they even want to call it. I told Jim he was disgusting as well as crazy. But when he said I wouldn’t even have to meet the man, let alone stand in front of an Indian minister with him, I had to give in.”

  She lowered her eyes to her helpless looking hands as she added, softly, “I had no place else to go. I broke up with the boy back East who’d been courting me when Jim wrote how rich we were going to get out here. I must have been crazy, too. But Jim treats me decent enough and I get to laze about and eat all I want. I suspect you don’t believe I’ve never been in bed with any Indian in all my born days, right?”

  Stringer said, gently, “I believe you. Walter Bluefeather told me he’d married a white gal in name only. Now that we’ve met, I feel sure he never could have seen you in the flesh.”

  She flustered the top of her robe back together as she blushed and said, “Oh, whatever could be wrong with me this morning? I swear I don’t know why I’m sitting here half undressed, pouring my heart out to a total stranger like this! You must think I’m just a silly little fool!”

  He shook his head soberly and said, “Nope. If I had to put a label to your sufferings, I’d call ’em cabin fever. You’ve got yourself stuck in a sort of gilded cage, even if it is painted mustard colored. You’re too young and healthy looking to lay slugabed with a box of chocolates and you dasn’t try to make any friends in the neighborhood lest they ask delicate questions you don’t ` want to answer. You just opened up to me, all at once, because you found us sitting here like strangers on a train and you’ve been just busting to talk about your troubles with somebody who might not gossip to the neighbors, right?”

  She dimpled at him and said, “My, you do understand human nature of the distaff persuasion. I hope you don’t mean to print anything I just told you in your paper!”

  He chuckled and said, “Not hardly. I don’t write a gossip column and you have to be more famous to appear in the one we do run in the Sun. Nothing you’ve told me is unlawful, exactly. Your Osage husband helps run his tribal council and I doubt he lied to them about your deal with him. Might you know if the BIA has you down with an allotment number, you being a dependent Indian family member and all?”

  She looked incredulous and gasped, “Good heavens, do I look like an Indian?” So he had to explain, “Lots of folk with red hair and green eyes are listed as Indians by the government. I know of a full-blooded Miwok barber back in Calaveras County who never asked to be listed at all. It’s not what you look like that they worry about in Washington. It’s whether you want a fight with the U.S. Army or a handout from the BIA that counts. The famous Black Warrior of the Alabama Creeks was a runaway slave of pure African descent and they still had to deal with him as a mighty wild Indian. Chief Ross of the Cherokee never would have had to walk the Trail Of Tears if he’d just moved into, say, Nashville and shut up about it. Some of the soldiers marching him and his people west likely had as much Indian blood, had they wanted to brag about it. I reckon I’ll just see how they might have a Victoria Bluefeather listed with the BIA these days. I won’t tell ’em I just met you or comment on your complexion, seeing as I hope we’re friends.”

  As he reached for his hat and rose, she got to her own feet as well, asking, wistfully, “Must you go so soon? It seems you just got here and I’ve been so lonely!”

  He gulped as she put her hands gently to his shirt front and added, “Can’t you say just a little while longer? Jim won’t be back for hours and I haven’t had a chance to entertain you at all properly!”

  He wondered how proper what she had in mind might be, and felt sort of wistful about that last time in old Irene’s bathtub. If he was right about the smoke signals in this redhead’s green eyes, he could still make a fool out of himself by grabbing her back, even if she really wanted him to.

  But he felt sorry for the poor lonesome gal and it wasn’t even noon, yet. So he said, “I reckon I could stay a mite longer if you’re pining for company, Miss Victoria. But what do you want to talk about, now? I thought we just about covered all your depressing family secrets.”

  She said, “Let me be the judge of that,” and took him by one hand to lead him out of her parlor. As they headed back along the hall toward what had to be her kitchen Stringer assumed he was in for some coffee and cake. She was muttering something about the boy back home she’d abandoned to go west and marry Indians. But when they got to the big kitchen she led him through it to what he expected to be an adjoining pantry. Only, when they got there, it turned out to be a bitty bedroom with an adjoining bath. She told him, “This would be the maid’s quarters, if we had a live-in maid. We only have a Cherokee lady who comes in once a week.”

  Then she said, pointedly, “She’s not due today and nobody else ever comes back here, if you take my meaning.”

  He did, but he still felt it best to warn her, “I don’t know, Miss Victoria. I can tell you’ve been feeling neglected. But I’m just a tumbleweed kind of drifting through these parts.” To which she replied with a knowing smile, “I’m glad. I can’t afford to get involved this way with anyone from Oklahoma.”

  He didn’t have to ask what she meant by involved, since she just shucked her robe to let it fall to the floor and stand there bare as Venus rising from the waves, saying, “Well. How do you like me so far?”

  He liked what he saw a lot more than Irene back at the hotel might have wanted him to. Both of them had lovely bodies, but the contrast between this pale green-eyed redhead and the smouldering, tawny Irene was about as great as it could have gotten without one of them being ugly. So he shut the door behind him, made sure it was locked, and hung up his hat and gun rig to get his own duds off as Victoria threw herself down on the teal blue silk bedcovers, moaning, “Hurry! Hurry! It’s been over a year!”

  He believed the poor young gal as he lay down beside her to take her in his naked arms, hoping his fool pecker wouldn’t let them both down after all the abuse it had suffered from a wild Comanche. But it didn’t. For Victoria was mighty wild in her own right and just the thought of parting that carrot-colored love fuzz with it halfway up inspired it to rise to full attention before he’d done so, groaning, “Jee-zuss!” through clenched teeth as he felt what he was getting into. Going without sex as long as she had had swollen as well as lubricated her lips. But she wrapped her long white legs around him and hugged him deeper, moaning, “Oh, Lord, I’d forgotten how good this felt, even playing with myself so much!”

  Then they were too busy kissing to talk about it for a spell. It seemed to drive her even wilder when he took longer than usual to climax, great as it felt. She took advantage of his hesitation to come thrice in a row before he pounded them both to full glory and went limp in her arms, gasping for breath and knowing he was done for if he took it out for some smoking and cuddling. Women never seemed to understand men, bless them, for she hugged him tightly with her thighs and crooned, “Oh, do you really want more? This is heavenly!”

  Then she confided, with a teasing interna
l contraction, “I’ve never been ashamed of my warm nature. I just happen to be particular about who I do this with. You may as well know, now, that I did try to tell myself to behave, as we were talking out front and I saw you were staring at my little titties.”

  He laughed, kissed her, and said, “If they were all that little we might not be having this conversation. I was trying to behave myself, too. Ain’t human weakness swell?”

  She said, “I’m probably going to feel mighty ashamed of myself after you tumbleweed on. Meanwhile, I want to get on top.”

  He let her. He was no fool. And as she proceeded to do all the work, with him staring up at her bobbing charms in broad daylight, he said, “You’ve got nothing to feel ashamed of, pard. You’re built swell enough to pose for an art class, if only you were holding still.”

  She blushed and told him he was awful, even as she leaned foreward to let him tease her nipples with his tongue. If they hadn’t been behaving so shamelessly in bright light, he might not have been able to treat her so right. But by the time it was his turn on top again he was able to. It took her longer to come that time and as they finally managed a long almost painful mutual climax, he felt the dumb thing quitting cold on him inside her. She felt what was happening as well. But instead of calling him a sissy she kissed him tenderly and murmured, “We’d better stop while we’re sated for the moment. I must have been crazy to act like this under my own brother’s roof in broad daylight. But now that we’re sane again, at last. We really have to consider possible consequences!”

  He felt icy fingers up his spine but kept his own voice calm and pleasant as he asked, “Oh? Don’t you know how to, ah, take care of yourself, honey?”

  She kissed him again and said, “Good God, do you think any girl would drag a total stranger into bed with her if she didn’t? I’m not worried about that. I just don’t know how I’d explain it if Jim came home unexpected!”

  It would have been crude of Stringer to agree a would-be loving relation might like it even less after being turned down by a shy baby sister. So he agreed it might be a smart move to quit while they were ahead and she was back in her robe with her hair repinned, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, before he could even get his boots on.