“Henry,” she said, “I’ve got to be getting back home before it gets too late.”
“How’d you get here?” he asked.
“Papa let me ride old Jeff,” she said, nodding toward the fence at the far end of the porch.
Henry glanced after her nod and saw Jeff Davis, Mr. Morrison’s old workhorse, nonchalantly grazing at the clumps of grass at his feet. He wore no saddle.
“I’ll borrow a saddle horse and a saddle for you,” he said, “and I’ll ride back with you. Just sit down here and relax for a few minutes, and I’ll be right back. Okay?”
Charlie Todd let Henry borrow a horse and saddle for Mae, and Henry saddled up that one and his own, the one his uncle had brought to him to ride back from Fort Smith. As Henry had been swindled out of his own horse and saddle by the redheaded lawyer in Fort Smith, his uncle had made him a gift of the other. Soon Mae and Henry were riding toward the Morrison home, leading Jeff Davis. For Henry the ride was all too short, but it was late and Mae had to get inside. They put Jeff Davis away, and Henry walked Mae up to the house.
“Thank you for coming to see me,” he said. “I do feel a lot better.”
“Will you come over and see me on Sunday, Henry?”
“Nothing could keep me away now, Mae,” said Henry. “I’ll be here.”
As he rode back toward the Todd Ranch, Henry sat light in the saddle. Things seemed to be working out all right. He had, indeed, had a bad time, and it had been all undeserved. Yet his friends and his relatives, his employer, all knew that he had not been to blame. Perhaps, after all, he should feel good that he was known and liked well enough to have withstood the stigma of the Fort Smith jail and the charge of horse stealing. Not just anyone would have been able to overcome those things as well as he had, he thought. It was amazing how much better the closeness of Mae had made him feel. He could see now that he need not have stayed away from her all that time. He should have known how she would react.
Henry still felt good the following morning when the boss sent him into town in the wagon to pick up some new rolls of wire. Todd had noticed that Henry had been confining himself pretty much to the ranch until Mae had come around, and he had decided that it would be good for the young man to make the trip into town. The last time Henry had gone to town, he had gotten into trouble. The way Todd looked at it, it was the same thing as getting back on a horse after a man has been thrown. He also wanted Henry to know that he still trusted him, that he hadn’t put any stock in that charge of Eaton’s. So he had purposely picked Henry out to send on the errand to town, and he had been pleased to find Henry willing, even eager, to make the trip. It looked to Todd, too, as if things were going to be all right.
Henry was about halfway to town when he heard a rider coming up behind him on the road, and he heard his name called. He pulled the wagon to a halt and turned in the seat to see who was coming. He recognized the rider as Tump Collins, a man he knew from hanging around Nowata. They were not good friends, just mere acquaintances. Henry sat and waited for Collins to ride up beside the wagon. Collins seemed to be in a hurry, and he was carrying in his left hand a valise.
“Hello, Tump,” said Henry. “You seem to be in a big hurry to get somewhere.”
“Yeah,” said Collins. “I’m supposed to meet someone about a job. Say, are you headed into town?”
“Yeah. Running an errand for the boss.”
“Well, listen, Henry, you’d do me a real favor if you’d let me toss this here grip in your wagon and haul it into town for me. It sure is awkward toting it around like this.”
“What do I do with it when I get to town?”
“Just leave it for me at the hotel. They know me. I’ll pick it up there later. Okay?”
“Sure,” said Henry.
Collins reached over and set the valise down in the wagon bed, then he touched the brim of his hat and nodded to Henry as he began to turn his horse.
“Thanks,” he said, and he rode off back in the direction he had come from.
Henry flicked the reins and resumed his drive to town. He had gone only another mile or so when he once again heard the sound of hooves behind him. He glanced over his shoulder again and this time saw two riders coming hard. He turned his attention back to the road so as to keep the wagon to one side and allow the riders to pass easily. After a moment he glanced again back to see how close they were getting, and this time he could see them more clearly. They were both white men. Henry did not recognize them, but he could see that they were holding revolvers in their hands. When the riders came up alongside the wagon, they slowed their mounts and pointed the pistols at Henry. He stopped the wagon again and set the hand brake.
“Hold it, there. Pull up,” shouted one of the riders.
“What’s this all about?” said Henry.
“We’re deputy United States marshals,” said the second rider.
Henry felt a moment of panic surge through his body as the speaker climbed down off his horse and stepped over to the wagon. The man tucked his pistol into his waistband and reached over the wagon box to pick up the valise that Collins had deposited there. He opened it up to reveal its contents to his partner, who was still holding his gun on Henry.
“Whiskey,” said the still-mounted deputy.
“Whiskey?” said Henry. “Hey, I didn’t have any idea what was in that grip.”
“Say, Homer,” said the man holding the valise, “he says he didn’t even know what’s in here.”
“Naw,” said Homer in mock disbelief.
“I don’t even drink whiskey,” said Henry.
“In that case,” said Homer, “you must have intended to sell it, and that makes the charge against you more serious. Slap the cuffs on him, Pete.”
Pete replaced the valise in the wagon and reached under his dusty coat for a pair of handcuffs.
“Not again,” said Henry, a little more loudly than he had intended.
“Oh,” said Pete, “you been arrested before?”
“Yeah, but I was innocent.”
“That’s what they all say,” said Pete. “Stick your hands out here.”
Henry obeyed.
“Where are you taking me? To Fort Smith?”
“Nope,” said Homer. “Whiskey court in Muskogee.”
With Henry’s wrists cuffed, he couldn’t be expected to drive the wagon, so Pete climbed up on the seat beside him to drive.
“Bring my horse, Homer?” he said.
“Sure.”
Pete whipped up the team and the wagon moved along down the road. Homer took the reins of Pete’s horse in his hand and climbed into his own saddle, but then he just sat there as if he were waiting for someone else. Pretty soon another rider appeared from around the bend to his rear and loped his horse up casually to stop beside Homer. It was the deputy called Bernie, the one who had first arrested Henry on false charges in Nowata. He smiled and touched the brim of his battered hat.
“I’m obliged, Homer,” he said.
“That’s all right,” said Homer. “Hell, we can’t be letting these damned Indians think they can get the best of the law.”
8
Henry took his second brush with the law a bit more in stride. To begin with, Muskogee was not as far away from home as was Fort Smith. In fact, Muskogee was less than a dozen miles from the home of Henry’s mother near Fort Gibson. In the second place, Henry knew from his first experience that Uncle Charlie Starr not only could, but would, help him out of a jam, and from the jail in Muskogee, Henry found it relatively simple to get word to his uncle. The jail, though far from pleasant, was much more easily endured than was the one at Fort Smith, and, finally, though it was certainly frustrating for Henry to have been accused wrongly a second time, his first experience taught him that he could get out of the troublesome situation and recover from it. In short, although he was angry at the mistreatment he was receiving at the hands of the federal authorities, he was also just a bit cocky. He was a veteran.
Uncle Char
lie did show up, and he did get Henry out of the cell. This time, however, Henry would have to go to court, and this time Charlie Starr had a different kind of advice.
“I advise you to plead guilty, Henry,” he said, “and pay the fine.”
“But, Uncle Charlie, I didn’t do anything.”
“This time, Henry, you got no case. You was arrested by two deputies—not one—two. You was alone, and they found whiskey on you.”
“It wasn’t on me, Uncle Charlie. It was in the wagon, and I told you how it got there. I didn’t even know what it was.”
“Henry,” said Charlie, “it’s your word against theirs. Two lawmen. There wasn’t nobody else around. You are, in fact, guilty of having that stuff in your possession. There is no way we can even argue against that.”
“It was a setup,” said Henry. “Someone’s out to get me because of Uncle Sam and Grandpa.”
Charlie Starr rubbed his fists into his eyes and turned away from his nephew. He knew that there was a possibility that Henry might be right. He didn’t really think that was what was happening, but it had happened before. Old Tom Starr, father of Charlie and Sam and Hop, was said to have killed a hundred men. His father, James, had been one of the signers of the Treaty of New Echota, the fraudulent treaty by which the United States Government justified the removal of the entire Cherokee Nation from their ancestral homelands in what had become North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and other Southern states. The treaty signers had been blamed by other tribal members for the misery of the Trail of Tears, and after the bitter trail, treaty signers, including Major Ridge, John Ridge, Elias Boudinot, and James Starr, had been brutally assassinated. Tom had witnessed the killing of his father and had vowed revenge, and the bloody trail he left behind him insured the entire Starr family more than its share of enemies.
Tom Starr had lived to a ripe old age, and even before his death, his son Sam had added to the notoriety of the family by his marriage to a white woman named Myra Belle Shirley. She had become famous as Belle Starr, and Belle and Sam, Henry’s Uncle Sam, were rumored to be involved in a large-scale horse stealing operation. There were dime novels out circulating all over the country about the Starrs, particularly about Belle, but Sam and even Old Tom were frequently mentioned in the tales. It was a family reputation that was not always easy to live with. Henry particularly resented the fact that his family name was beginning to be associated widely with a white woman. Some of the dime novels he had seen did not even make mention of the fact that Belle’s husband, Sam, was Indian. He appeared as a white man.
At any rate, Charlie Starr knew that there were people who would do almost anything to get to the Starrs. He knew that Henry had nothing to do with the revenge pattern of Old Tom or with the activities of Sam and Belle, but he also knew that to some, none of that would make any difference. In fact, according to Charlie’s experience with the world, there were a good many people who would seek revenge or assuage their jealousies by purposefully seeking out the seeming most vulnerable and defenseless member of a family.
Charlie turned back on Henry with a surprising fierceness in his look.
“I don’t think so, Henry,” he said. “Most of that’s long over. More likely, one of two things happened. Either that fellow who dumped the whiskey on you knew that there were some deputies around and he needed to get rid of it quick and found you handy, or maybe he was in cahoots with them laws to set you up. You know what they call them blank warrants they carry around on them?”
“Yeah,” said Henry. “Whiskey warrants.”
When Henry stood up before the judge in the courtroom in Muskogee, a court that had been established by the federal government just to deal with violations of the liquor laws in the so-called Indian Territory and thereby to lessen the load on the federal court in Fort Smith, he took his uncle’s advice.
“How do you plead?” droned the judge.
Henry took a deep breath. He steeled himself against what he was about to do that went so much against his grain—that so violated his strong sense of duyukduh.
“Guilty,” he said. He felt cold and hard. He felt betrayed all over again, and most of all he felt as if he had finally, through experience, learned the absolute truth about the white man and his government. The extent of the corruption of the federal law enforcement system, including the courts, had been laid bare before him. He felt smug, and he felt totally cynical.
“The fine is one hundred dollars. Pay the clerk.”
The judge rapped his gavel. He was shuffling papers on his desk, pushing those for Henry’s case aside and already looking at those for his next victim. He had not once, throughout the entire proceedings, even looked at Henry. Henry turned to walk back to the clerk’s table with a smirk on his face. He knew these people, he thought, much better than they knew him. They would not catch him napping again.
“Next case,” droned the judge.
Uncle Charlie Starr paid the fine, then he bought Henry a railroad ticket back to Nowata. Henry had a vague feeling that his uncle had been glad to see him off on the train. In fact, Henry thought that there was more than an even chance that Charlie hadn’t believed his story this time. He was developing a reputation not of his own making, and the prediction of his dream, the dream in which his friends and relatives had turned their backs on him in shame, was beginning to come true.
9
Back at work at the Todd Ranch, Henry found himself stretching the new barbed wire, which someone else had been required to haul back to the ranch, with another cowboy, named Milo. Milo was about Henry’s age, and, like most of the cowboys in that part of the Nation, white. He was likable enough, Henry thought, though not particularly bright—a little slow on the uptake. The day was hot and the work was hard and tedious. Henry would much rather have been working with cows, branding and roping, rounding them up, herding, castrating bulls even, almost anything other than stringing wire. Stringing wire didn’t even seem to Henry like cowboy’s work. He didn’t like the new wire anyway, with its vicious barbs that could rip the flesh of a cow or horse—or a man. He had heard that a white man in Illinois had invented the wire, and that there was a dispute up there over just who actually owned the patent—who was the actual inventor. Henry thought that only a white man could have come up with an idea as wicked as barbed wire, and only a white man would claim another’s invention for his own and wind up in court over the whole thing. He banged a staple into the post at which he was working, then sat back heavily on the ground and pulled the bandanna out of his rear pocket to wipe the sweat from his face.
“Milo,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Let’s take a breather.”
“Yeah,” said Milo, moving over to sit beside Henry, “I can use one.”
Henry lay back in the dirt with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“Milo,” he said, “what are you going to do with your life?”
Milo looked at Henry, his face wrinkled in puzzlement.
“What?” he said.
“You going to break your back like this for somebody else all your life? Sweating in the sun? Eating dust? Stringing this bob wire and tearing your gloves up? Cutting your hands? Getting blisters?”
“Well,” said Milo, “I don’t intend to work here forever.”
“Where are you going then? Some other ranch? One ranch is about like another,” said Henry, and he felt something sinister welling up inside him. “What are you going to do?”
“Aw, I don’t know. Hell, I—”
“Milo,” Henry interrupted, “would you be interested in making some easy money?”
Milo leaned forward. He had taken the bait. Henry didn’t dislike Milo. In fact, he kind of liked him in spite of Milo’s slow wit. He wasn’t really much good for conversation for a man like Henry who, in spite of his lack of formal education, had been a voracious reader for as long as he could remember. But the main thought in Henry’s mind, other than the desire to accomplish his imme
diate goal, was the irony of what he had in mind. It was white people who had spoiled the Cherokee Nation and were ruining Henry’s life, and here he was about to lead a white man off the straight and narrow path.
“What have you got in mind, Henry?” said Milo.
“I’ve been to jail twice, Milo,” said Henry, “and the last time I even pled guilty and paid a fine, and I’ve never committed a crime in my life.”
“That’s rotten luck, Henry.”
“I got to thinking,” said Henry, “if I’m going to carry the name of criminal, I might as well be one.”
Henry paused to let that last soak in. Milo took off his hat and scratched his head. He had an idea what Henry was leading up to, and he was sort of mulling it over. He waited for Henry to say more, but Henry kept quiet. Finally Milo broke the silence.
“So what have you got in mind?” he asked.
“I was in Nowata at the depot just watching the train come in,” said Henry, knowing that he had Milo hooked, “and I noticed a fat roll of bills in the safe. I thought I might make good my bad reputation by robbing that safe. It’s an easy job. The depot is open until ten o’clock at night, and the agent’s there all by himself. What do you say? You with me?”
Nightfall found the two young cowboys just outside of Nowata looking down onto the town. Both had six-guns tucked into their belts. Milo looked nervous.
“You okay, Milo?” Henry asked.
“Yeah.”
“You ready to go through with this? You sure?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m ready. I’m okay.”
“Then let’s go,” said Henry, spurring his mount.
Milo followed, and the two rode hard down into the main street of Nowata. No one paid much attention to them. It wasn’t unusual for young, rowdy cowboys to ride a little too fast through the streets. Henry led the way to the stockyards and pulled in the reins. He dismounted and tied his horse to a fence rail. Milo did the same. Then Henry looked carefully up and down the street. No one was near, and he pulled a bandanna out of his pocket and tied it around his face. Milo pulled out his own handkerchief, wiped his brow, then tied it over his face.
The Saga of Henry Starr Page 4
