Winding Stair (9781101559239) (15 page)

At the door, he spoke to Burris Garret.

“Why don't you tell him what we've got planned?” he said. “Come on, Joe, let's get to business.”

“If I'm with the Cap'n,” Joe Mountain called through the door, “they'll let me in that whorehouse.” I could see his wolf 's teeth shining.

Burris Garret pulled up a ladder-back beside my mattress and sat backward in the chair, resting his arms across the back. He felt my nose again and I winced, feeling cartilage grind under the skin.

“Old Schiller thinks you're a good man,” Garret said.

I lay with my eyes closed, sobering fast, attributable likely to the disgorging of rye under the streetlamp. I began to feel the bruises, along my ribs and under my eyes against the cheekbones. But it felt good. The hurts and the long talk Schiller had made, all of it felt good.

“I've been looking for your friend Milk Eye over in the Creek Nation,” Burris Garret said. “No luck yet.”

He spoke with a strange accent, but he had been well schooled in English. I supposed him at first to be from the North or perhaps from one of the British West Indies. Neither was the case.

“You work the Creek Nation?” I mumbled, fighting sleep now.

“That's right. I know all that country. Born there. Grew up there. My folks were Creek slaves; then after the Treaty of 1866 they were Creek citizens. I went to one of the Creek boys' academies. They got some good ones. Then I joined the Creek lighthorse. The Creek police. About three years ago, I got my commission as a deputy marshal out of Parker's court. We'll be working together on this case. It's winding down to the Creek country.”

His chocolate-colored face swam before my eyes.

“I never knew there were any . . .” I started to say, then stopped. He chuckled.

“Black marshals? Sure, there are a few. Parker doesn't care what you are, so long as you can marshal.”

He pulled the wad of cotton cloth from my mouth and stared intently into my nose.

“Looks like the bleeding stopped.”

“What about Schiller? Will he stay on this case?”

“Sure, it's his case. But we'll all be together now. We're going over to that prizefight across the river day after tomorrow.”

“What for?”

“We got a lead. I arrested a whiskey peddler this morning and brought him in from the Creek Nation. On the way, he fell off his horse a lot.” Garret laughed. I realized his gentle manner might be deceptive. “After a while, he got tired of falling off his horse and banging up his head. He told me there were rumors some of the Winding Stair bunch might come in for the betting.”

He swabbed my face with a damp cloth and I caught my breath when he touched the bridge of my nose.

“Whiskey peddlers are good sources. They're scared of what's going to happen to them in Parker's court. And they know most of the people in The Nations and what they do for pleasure.”

“You mean there are people over there who might know who we're after?”

“I suspect so.”

“And they won't come forward? They won't help bring in these killers?”

Burris Garret looked at me a long time before he answered, as though he wanted to think carefully about his words.

“No,” he said. “Oh, some will, but a lot of them have done things themselves that make them leery of the law. Some are scared to talk. And there are a lot of good people there who don't like the idea of turning their own kind over to a court outside their country. They all know that when a man gets to Fort Smith, he'll get tried by a white jury.”

I remembered what Evans had said once about the men hanged since 1875, when Judge Parker arrived.

“But Judge Parker's hanged more white men than Indians, by a hell of a sight.”

“Sure. And it's the white ones people in The Nations are most afraid of. You take a Cherokee killer. His own people are reluctant to inform on him and send him to a white man's court. But if the killer is a white man, they're usually afraid to inform on him.”

“But why?” I asked, and knew it was a stupid question even as I said it. Garret laughed, more at me than because it was funny, I suspected.

“Bad things can happen in the night,” he said.

“Well, it looks like we've already got the white man in this case,” I said.

“That's right. So you see why my whiskey peddler had to fall off his horse so much before he told me anything at all. He's a Creek, and the Yuchi are almost family to the Creeks sometimes.”

“You think Milk Eye might come?”

“He's a betting man, no doubt about that. And there'll be chicken fights later, after dark. And Milk Eye does like chicken fights. But I don't expect him. He may not be too smart but he's smart enough to stay hidden a while longer.”

“Do you know Milk Eye?”

“He and I grew up together,” Garret said. “He's a tough little Yuchi. His people are good folks. But they work hard and never have anything. They scratch corn and sorghum on a little patch of ground not far from Okmulgee. Poor as bald-headed whores.”

Garret stood up and hitched at his pants. The butt of the pistol thrust out black and deadly from beneath his coat.

“You get some sleep now,” he said. “Think I'll walk down to Henryetta's myself.”

He left the lamp burning and I lay watching the cobwebs moving gently among the rafters. I could still taste blood and sourness in my mouth. Before sleep came, my mind staggered from one thought to the next. It had been a day that would stay in my memory for a long time, each detail. I had been cut down a few pegs. First, that bastard Evans. Then Schiller. Not the railroaders, though. I had won that one. Maybe I had won them all. I felt a little older and I congratulated myself on the wisdom of my father for sending me here. Perhaps I had purchased a little wisdom myself, at the expense of a punctured self-esteem and a broken nose.

Something else filtered through my hazy thinking. At this moment, three very intimidating men were at Henryetta's, letting everyone know I was a part of the Parker court. I had come to know these men, and other deputies who worked for Parker, and they were good peace officers, each in his own way. But Oscar Schiller was good because people were afraid of him, and it made me feel good that I wasn't.

As I fell finally into a deep sleep, the last thing I heard was the late-night Texas freight road engine whistling in the yards before pulling out to the south for Winding Stair and Kiamachi Valley.

T
he fight was a complete debacle for the Fort Smith favorite.

Big Rachael's long arms and massive fists were of little use against the smaller, quick-footed Dirty Jake, who pummeled the bigger man almost at will, sending him down again and again. Big Rachael would rise, spitting blood, and stagger to his corner, where seconds dashed water in his face and swabbed off his mouth and nose. Before the minute expired, he would be back at center ring, toeing the mark as required in the rules of the prize ring.

They fought bare-knuckle, and after the third round each time Dirty Jake slammed his fist into Big Rachael's face, there was a sodden plop and blood flew out in the bright sunlight like the juice from an exploding watermelon. My own broken nose began to hurt from watching it, and after a while I moved back through the crowd—away from the ring, away from the sounds of it. But somehow, there was a dreadful fascination about it, and standing near the wagons and rigs drawn up at the edges of the mob, I turned back and saw the rest.

After the twenty-ninth knockdown, Big Rachael did not return to his corner but went directly to the ring ropes and between them. He passed through the crowd as they gave way before him, everyone staring at his mangled face and the red-stained sweatshirt and tights. He was crying by the time he reached Henryetta's surrey, and the crowd stood silently, listening to the big man.

“I couldn't catch the little bastard, Miss Henryetta,” he blubbered. “I just couldn't catch him.”

“It's all right, Rachael. You done the best you knew how. Get on back of the wagon.”

After he had climbed up behind the rear seat and sat with his legs dangling, she whipped her team off toward the ferry slip. It was not a pleasant scene, the giant leaving a blood-splattered ring and begging his mistress for forgiveness. There were few in the crowd who did not know that Henryetta had bet her money on the Yankee.

Oscar Schiller came over beside me then and we watched the surrey going down toward the river, other vehicles following close behind. There had been a great deal of shouting from the crowd at first, but when the nature of the contest had become clear, they quieted, and they were mostly silent now as they dispersed.

“I don't suppose you've seen anyone we might be wanting,” Schiller said.

“I don't even know what I'm looking for. Where's Garret and Joe Mountain?”

“Other side of the crowd. Let's go to the barn. You ever see a chicken fight?”

“No. But I hope it's not as bad as the one I just saw.”

“It's a helluva lot worse.”

But I was to be spared the sight of more blood that day. Garret and the Osage found us, and with them was a Creek policeman wearing what appeared to be an old army thigh-length coat. The garment struck me as incongruous in the July heat.

“This here is Moma July,” Garret said. “He's got something to tell us.”

Moma July was much like many of the The Nations Indians I had seen, only running a little more to middle-age overweight. His skin was darker than most, darker than Burris Garret's. It was the color of old pine bark, with a trace of yellow in it. He wore the usual large hat over close-cropped hair, and it settled so far down on his head there was the impression that his ears were holding it up. Around his thick neck was a yellowed bone necklace.