Kinch Riley / Indian Territory

by Matt Braun

  “Some habits are hard to break.”

  “Are you here under Colonel Stevens’ directions?”

  “I’m here,” Ryan said through clenched teeth, “because the Marshal asked. No other reason.”

  Tappin’s voice was alive with contempt. “Any excuse will do so long as it involves Indians. Is that it?”

  “I’m here, and I’m sworn. You make what you want of it.”

  “One day,” Tappin said ominously, “you’ll regret this. You have my solemn promise on that, Mr. Ryan.”

  Tappin wheeled around abruptly and walked into the courthouse. The sergeant and the second Light Horse followed a pace behind. Irvin glanced at Ryan, one eyebrow raised in a questioning look. When Ryan said nothing, the Marshal proceeded up the steps. Ryan and the others trailed him through the door.

  They moved along a central corridor inside the courthouse. Halfway down they turned left into the open door of the courtroom. Irvin was in the lead when he suddenly halted, his expression tense. The others crowded in behind him and were jammed together in an aisle between rows of benches. Irvin’s tension was contagious, and Ryan went stockstill, his every sense alerted.

  An oppressive sense of violence hung over the courtroom. There were no spectators occupying the benches, and the jury box was empty. Frank Proctor, who stood beside his lawyer at the defense table, looked terrified. The prosecutor sat at another table across from them and nervously fanned through a sheaf of papers. The Light Horse Police were spread out between the front row of benches and the defendant. They formed an armed line across the middle of the room.

  At the center of the line, Major Tappin was engaged in a one-sided conversation with the Light Horse sergeant. While Tappin talked, the sergeant listened and slowly nodded his head. After a moment Tappin turned, no longer talking, and looked directly at Ryan. The sergeant followed his gaze and both men stared at Ryan. Then the sergeant’s eyes became hooded, his face devoid of expression. He nodded once.

  Instinct told Ryan he’d been marked for death. He watched as Tappin turned and moved through a door at the rear of the room. Several moments passed, then the door opened and a man attired in a frock coat entered. He walked straight to the judge’s bench and stopped in front of a high-backed chair. His gaze shuttled around the courtroom before fixing on Sam Irvin. He glared down at the lawman.

  “Marshal Irvin,” he intoned, “I order you to remove yourself and those men from my court. If you refuse—”

  “No!”

  Bud Wilson’s strangled scream echoed off the walls. He leaped past Irvin, his Remington six-gun extended at arm’s length. The pistol roared and Proctor staggered backward into the defense table. He clutched at his throat and blood poured through his fingers. He made an ugly gurgling sound and dropped to the floor. In the next instant gunfire became general throughout the courtroom.

  Ryan acted on reflex alone. He saw the Light Horse sergeant’s carbine aimed directly at him. Ryan’s arm moved like light in a mirror, blurred motion. The Colt appeared in his hand and spat a sheet of flame. The slug impacted beneath the sergeant’s breastbone and jerked him sideways. His arms flailed wildly and the carbine slipped from his grasp. He pitched raglike into the front row of benches.

  A hail of lead whistled across the room as the Light Horse Police exchanged shots with Wilson and the Cherokees. The ranks of both sides were winnowed as though chopped down by a giant scythe. Three of the Cherokees were hurled backward, splattered with blood. Another dropped, then another, and finally Wilson staggered. He slumped to the floor without a sound.

  Only two Light Horse were still standing in the courtroom. The others were sprawled in death or wounded. Sam Irvin and one of the remaining Light Horse fired on each other almost simultaneously. The Light Horse collapsed to his knees and toppled over like a felled tree. Irvin stiffened, a gaping hole blown in his shirtfront, and his eyes went opaque. His knees buckled and he folded at the middle. He fell dead across Wilson’s body.

  Ryan was vaguely aware that he’d been wounded himself. His shirt was wet and sticky, and there was a faint buzzing in his ears. He turned, drawing a quick bead on the last Light Horse left standing. The man fired, and Ryan felt a burning sensation sear his left arm. He touched the trigger and the Colt bucked in his hand. A whoosh of breath exploded from the Light Horse as he let go of the carbine and clutched his stomach. He took a step sideways, then slowly pitched forward on his face.

  There was an instant of tomblike silence. Through a haze of gunsmoke, Ryan sensed all around him the carnage of a bloodbath. He realized for the first time that the judge and the defense attorney were down. A moan caught his attention, and he saw the prosecutor sitting beside the jury box, cradling a shattered arm. It came to him that no one was left on his feet. He was standing alone.

  His vision suddenly dimmed. The stench of death mixed with the sweet smell of blood was overpowering. The courtroom blurred before his eyes and the gun dropped from his hand. Slowly, all feeling gone, he folded to the floor. He lay perfectly still.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The toll from the courtroom shootout was eleven killed and eight critically wounded. Among the list of dead were the judge, the defendant and his attorney, and Bud Wilson. The Cherokees filed a formal protest with Washington, which was studiously ignored. The death of deputy U.S. Marshal Sam Irvin apparently balanced out against five dead Light Horse. No federal warrants were issued on the Cherokee survivors.

  Nor were any federal charges preferred against Ryan. He’d been a duly sworn officer of the federal court at the time of the shootout. His actions were in the discharge of duty and therefore both legal and defensible. Because he was white, the Cherokee Nation was unable to prefer charges of any nature. But there was little doubt that he’d been judged and found guilty by certain factions within the tribe. For all practical purposes, he was under a sentence of death.

  Grievously wounded, Ryan had barely survived the shootout itself. At William Ross’ order, he’d been tended for several days by a Cherokee physician. A bullet had been removed from his side, and only after forty-eight hours had the danger of infection been dismissed. The wound in his left arm, which passed clean through, had presented no complications. Three days after the shootout, he had been moved by wagon to end-of-track. There, under the watchful eye of Tom Scullin, he’d been nursed back to health by the camp’s cooks.

  On July 20 end-of-track crossed the northern border of the Creek Nation. The Katy was now sixty miles deep in Indian Territory, roughly a third of the way to the Red River. Texas and the Great Southwest no longer seemed a pipe dream.

  Robert Stevens and his section chiefs breathed a collective sigh of relief. Behind them lay the land of the Cherokees and nearly five months of bitter strife. Bypassing Fort Gibson would surely provoke some act of reprisal from William Ross. Yet there had been a curious silence out of Tahlequah and the Cherokee council. No one believed it would last indefinitely.

  Still, there was a sense of deliverance throughout the camp. The lowliest track layer was aware that a crisis had been averted. While the Creeks were by no means allies, they were notably less antagonistic toward white men. The Creeks were perhaps more fatalistic than the Cherokees. The iron horse was treated somewhat like a natural disaster: regrettable but unavoidable. The tribal council effectively turned a blind eye to the railroad.

  The Creek Nation represented a personal haven for John Ryan as the long weeks of his convalescence passed. At first, while confined to his bunk he’d had plenty of time to reflect on the shootout. His principal regret centered around the death of Sam Irvin. He had genuinely liked the lawman, and he felt somehow diminished by the passing of a friend. There was, as well, an idle thought that his presence might have jinxed the entire courtroom affair.

  Violence seemed to have followed wherever he went since he first arrived in Indian Territory. Looking back on the men he’d killed—which now included two Light Horse—he began thinking of his job as a sort of death work. He w
as the lightning rod that drew the Cherokees’ fire almost as if he’d been destined to attract violence and death. And he wondered if it had been Irvin’s misfortune to share his ill luck.

  Lying in his bunk, he had brooded about it for several days. Whether or not his luck had rubbed off on Irvin would remain an unknown. But there was no question that he’d spent too much time on the killing ground. Nor was it entirely happenstance that the men he’d killed over the past several months were Cherokee. The tribe he admired most seemed somehow slated to be his deadly antagonist.

  However much he pondered on the problem, the reason eluded him. There was no explanation for why he and the Cherokees had been brought to a common killing ground. But all his pondering led to a seed of thought that slowly took root. As though drawn to it, he had years ago chosen a line of work that dealt largely with death. Now with newfound clarity, he saw something he’d been blinded to in the past. Despite the best of intentions, death work was too often indiscriminate. The man who performed it was seldom given choices. He killed almost by random lot, for by the nature of his work he killed anyone who tried to kill him.

  In that respect, there was still a score to be settled. Ryan knew that the courtroom shootout and the death of the Light Horse sergeant had changed nothing. Major David Tappin had personally marked him for death, and the sentence would not be withdrawn. There was no court of last resort, no appeal. Tappin would simply pick another executioner, and if he failed, then another, until the job was done. To save himself, Ryan would have no option but to respond in kind. He would have to kill Tappin.

  Oddly, the thought of killing always brought to mind Elizabeth. He had entertained the notion that she might visit him after the courtroom shootout. While he was under the care of the Cherokee doctor, he’d finally come to his senses. She wouldn’t look in on him or inquire about his condition, and she had an excellent reason. Of the eleven dead men, nine were Cherokee, all of them her people. She would assign at least part of the blame to him, and no explanation would alter the judgment. In a sense, the Tahlequah courtroom had been his last bridge. And he’d burned it to a cinder.

  The realization gave Ryan some long and restless nights. Still, for all his regrets he was not a man to dwell on the past. By the third week of his recovery, he was able to hobble around on a cane, and he was getting restless. Tom Scullin, returning one night to the bunk car they shared, found him cleaning his guns. The Irishman shook his head with a look of amusement.

  “By all the saints! What d’ya think you’re about here?”

  “Just what it looks like. I’m cleaning a shotgun.”

  “Are you daft?” Scullin rumbled. “You’re not yet mended!”

  Ryan ran a swab through the off-hand barrel of the scattergun. He held the open breech to the lamplight and peered down the bore. Satisfied, he began swabbing the other barrel.

  “You’d make a hell of a wet nurse, Tom. Only you’re not exactly built for it.”

  Scullin huffed indignantly. “Full of piss and vinegar, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve felt worse,” Ryan commented. “And you can stop treating me like I’m an invalid. I threw the cane away today.”

  “Did you now? I suppose you’ll tell me next you’re ready to start work?”

  Ryan smiled. “You must be a mind reader.”

  “God’s teeth!” Scullin rumbled. “We’ve not had a speck of trouble since you were shot. What’s the rush?”

  “I figure it’s time I earned my keep. Besides, I’m tired of you hovering over me like a mother hen.”

  “You’re an ingrate, John Ryan. And a poor excuse for an Irishman too!”

  Ryan inspected the bore against the light. Then he snapped the breech closed and leaned the shotgun in a corner. He finally looked up at Scullin.

  “Tomorrow”—he paused, grinning—“I think I’ll ride out and scout around. What do you say to that?”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

  Toward the end of August, the railroad reached Three Forks. The track stopped on the north bank of the Verdigris River, awaiting a bridge. But the delay was momentary and lasted only one night.

  Scullin and his work gangs forded the stream early next morning. Behind them a caravan of wagons hauled construction supplies to the opposite shore. By noontime the graders had started a roadbed and the track crews were hard at work. Not quite four miles ahead lay the Arkansas River.

  From the Verdigris crossing point, the muddy stream curved south to mingle with the Arkansas and the Neosho. The confluence of these three great rivers, along with the stretch of land between the Verdigris and the Arkansas, was the famed Three Forks. A small Creek settlement located where the waters met served as the tribal headquarters. The area had been the commercial hub of Indian Territory scarcely four decades ago.

  Keelboats and shallow-draft paddle-wheelers plied upriver to the landing at Three Forks in the 1830’s. Vast shipments of baled furs were assembled at Chouteau’s Trading Post. Boatloads of the valuable cargo were transported downriver to New Orleans and eventually to the fur market in St. Louis. At the time Sam Houston, who later led Texas to independence, lived in a wilderness area near Three Forks. His log cabin, which he called Wigwam Neosho, was a gathering place for officers stationed at Fort Gibson.

  Three Forks had fallen on lean times with the decline of the fur trade. But there was a new explosion of activity with the arrival of the Katy. A terminus, which was quickly dubbed Gibson Station, was located on high ground north of the Verdigris crossing. The station depot was completed, and daily passenger service began operating between Kansas and Indian Territory. Track sidings and a turntable were installed, and shortly afterward loading pens were erected to serve the cattle trade. The first herd of longhorns trailed in from Texas a week later.

  The freight of military and civilian goods further intensified the boom. Army detachments hacked a wagon road through the wilderness from Fort Gibson to the terminus. Caravans from Overland Transit, which had obtained the contract for hauling government supplies, began departing with quartermaster stores and Indian allotments for transhipment throughout the Southwest. Towns in northern Texas were also quick to take advantage of the new railhead. From the south long wagon trains bulging with cotton were soon strung out along the trail between Gibson Station and the Red River.

  A hastily constructed warehouse was packed to overflowing within days of being built. Mountains of freight, awaiting available wagons, lay stacked in the rail yard and along the tracks. Almost five hundred tons of materials were offloaded for transshipment to military posts in Indian Territory and Texas in a matter of weeks. Swamped by the flood of supplies, Overland Transit scarcely put a dent in the massive piles at end-of-track. The problem quickly added to the already herculean task of organizing and policing a wilderness settlement.

  Spanning the barriers of the Verdigris and Arkansas rivers was expected to delay railroad construction for several months. As a result Gibson Station was designated the Katy’s base of operations and main supply depot. Trainloads of construction materials were brought down from Pryor’s Creek and dumped beside the mounds of government goods. Following close behind was the sporting crowd from Elias Boudinot’s town site. Gamblers and saloonkeepers, whores and grifters simply packed up and deserted the Cherokee Nation en masse.

  Gibson Station began to take on a look of permanence within a fortnight. A tent town of more than fifty structures sprang to life around the depot. The ladies of Poonville opened for business, and raucous music blasted from a row of dance halls and saloons. Texas cowhands and outlaws, along with the usual assortment of cardsharps and footloose wanderers were thrown together with the roughnecks of Scullin’s Irish Brigade. Added to this volatile mix was a new element: full-bloods and breeds who were drawn to the hurdy-gurdy boomtown. The Creeks, unlike the Cherokees, evidenced a great curiosity about the white man’s ways.

  Gibson Station was like an elixir to Ryan. By now completely recovered, he needed a stimulant, some new
challenge to seize his interest. He quickly laid out rules of conduct for the sporting crowd as he had at previous railheads. Word spread that gunplay and mayhem would not be tolerated by the Katy’s special agent. His reputation alone, which had been enhanced greatly by the courtroom shootout, served to dampen the rowdier element’s enthusiasm. No one made even a halfhearted attempt to hoorah the town.

  The military supply dump was an altogether different matter. The jumble of crates, stuffed with every imaginable type of goods, proved to be a magnet for thieves and looters. At Ryan’s suggestion Stevens telegraphed the railroad’s main office, ordering armed guards to be hired in Kansas and rushed south. The Fort Gibson commander also detached a platoon to act as sentries. The sight of soldiers patrolling the rail yard quickly had the desired effect. Thieves soon began to give the supply depot a wide berth.

  Early in September Ryan got the first real challenge to his authority. Word reached him that Brad Collins, a whiskey smuggler and desperado, had drifted into town. Collins was a half-blood Cherokee outcast, renounced by his own tribe and posted from the Cherokee Nation. A federal warrant was still out on him for shooting a deputy marshal. He traveled with a pack of cutthroats and robbers, vicious breeds who to a man were wanted by the law. To date, none of them had been arrested.

  Ryan walked uptown. He carried the shotgun under the crook of his arm, proceeding along the rutted street at a deliberate pace. A knot of men loafing outside one of the saloons quickly took their business indoors. Several tents farther down, he turned in at the Acme Saloon and Gaming Parlor. He moved through the door and stopped.

  Brad Collins stood at the bar. He was whipcord lean, light-skinned for a half-breed, with a hard smile and empty eyes. His men were gathered around him and listened attentively when he spoke. Three of them flanked him on one side and two on the other, and their deferential attitude was a message in itself. Even a casual observer could readily spot the gang leader.