Winding Stair (9781101559239) (16 page)

“Since you Fort Smith men sent us all them details on the Winding Stair killings, I been watchin' out,” he said. “Three days ago I was on the north fork of the Canadian, lookin' in on a man we caught a few times sellin' whiskey. Name Skitty Cornkiller. I never found no whiskey this time, but when I was ridin' off, I seen something else. There was this colored man hoeing in a garden behind the house. He's a man works for Skitty Cornkiller. And he was wearin' this hat. Big hat, black with a button on the front.”

Oscar Schiller glanced at me and I nodded, recalling what Charley Oskogee had told us about Thrasher's pearl hat. I felt the excitement lifting in me, but Schiller's expression did not change, as though this were something he had expected.

“Who's the colored man?”

“I don't know much about him. He's been with Skitty for years.”

“Well, we'd best get to business, then.” Schiller looked at me again. “You'll have to miss those chicken fights.”

A number of enterprising Cherokees had dug fire pits near the cotton barn and were roasting pigs. We stocked up on a mess of this greasy fare and headed west into the growing evening. Of course Schiller had his saddlebags, well stocked with sardines and hard biscuits, but I preferred the pork. Yet like most of the food in this country, it was heavy on the stomach. Within a few hours of traveling, moving slowly along dusty roads with the Creek leading, the old saddle bruises along my thighs revived, and when we camped for the first night, I slept on my back with my legs apart. My nose ached, but when I touched it I could feel the swelling almost gone.

 

 

The land was turning gray with the dawn as we waited in the brakes along a bend of the Canadian River's north fork a few miles south of Checotah, Creek Nation. From about a mile away, we could hear a Missouri, Kansas, and Texas freight moving toward the Choctaw Nation, the sound carried by a gentle wind that rustled the reeds and brush around us. In the near distance, toward the west, was a line of honey locusts, mostly old and twisted trees that waved and bobbed majestically in the wind, their masses of tiny leaves changing color as they danced and fluttered, catching the light of a new day.

Beyond the trees was a small, dilapidated farmhouse, the eaves drooping like rumpled covers from the corners of an unmade bed. Along with a few outbuildings, it sat in the midst of cleared ground, mostly uncultivated. We could see a clutter of trash scattered about the yard, and as the light increased, a few chickens began to move about, pecking at the debris. We heard a rooster crow, but so far as we could determine, there was no dog.

The outlines of Skitty Cornkiller's farm came more clearly to view with the approach of the sun. I jumped when a mockingbird started his program of calls from a hackberry bush close behind us. Joe Mountain grinned at me and winked. From farther up the flats, where timber stood in uneven lines, a cock cardinal began his morning challenge, his notes fluid and precise as a symphony flute.

Moma July had told us that Skitty Cornkiller was half-Creek: His father was an Indian, his mother a white woman, gone years ago to her people in Kansas. Left to himself, Cornkiller had turned to whiskey smuggling and let the farm go to ruin, although the black man tried to raise a little garden truck. We could see, close behind the house, the drooping turfs of radishes and a few green onions, some already gone to seed.

“It's light enough now so you can shoot, Joe, if you have to,” Schiller said. The Osage nodded, his lips stretched across his big eyeteeth. “All right. Let's get in fast.”

We mounted and started pushing our way through the brakes toward the farmyard. Joe Mountain had his Winchester up and Moma July was holding a sawed-off ten-gauge shotgun. Neither of the marshals had drawn a weapon. The horses picked their way through the honey locusts. We could see clearly now a litter of tin cans and broken glass, a rusted plowshare, some old wooden crates, and a number of barrel rims, like children's rolling hoops left discarded haphazardly across the grassless yard.

Moving quickly, we went down from the saddle, the two Indians before us. There was the frame of a screen door but no screen in it; otherwise the opening was unobstructed. Joe Mountain ducked in first, Moma July close behind, and we all followed. Burris Garret pulled a single-action pistol from his belt and cocked it, and I thought at the time that it was strange these Fort Smith marshals seemed to prefer the old singles over the pistols of more recent years.

There were two rooms. In the first were items of furniture that had the mark of quality about them, but like the house they had gone badly to pot. A large Rhode Island red hen was perched on the back of an ancient and scarred settee, and another walked calmly across a cold cookstove. In the other room was a four-poster bed and on that a bare mattress and on the mattress a sleeping man. He lay on his back, mouth open, undisturbed by our silent entry or by the many flies that had already begun to buzz about the room like tiny aerial whipsaws. On one of the bedposts were a cartridge belt and a holstered pistol. Moma July lifted it quickly and handed it back to me, never taking his eyes off the sleeping man. We gathered about the bed as though it were an open casket of some departed relative and looked down at the man in his long flannel underwear. He had an erection.

Moma July jabbed the sleeping man with the muzzle of the shotgun.

“Skitty, wake up. You got company,” he said.

Skitty Cornkiller grunted and rolled over against the wall, drawing his legs up so his knees almost touched his chest. He was slender, and from my first impression I supposed him to be in his midtwenties. His hair was jet-black and cut short. Although his skin was as fair as my own, he had pronounced cheekbones and a wide, thick-lipped mouth. Moma July punched him in the kidney with the shotgun, harder this time.

Cornkiller gasped and sat up, saying something explosive in Creek. His eyes were bloodshot, and as he tried to focus he sat there jerking his head back and forth, looking at each of us in turn.

“Wake up, whiskey peddler,” Burris Garret said, and he reached over to take a handful of flannel underwear at the throat and yank Skitty Cornkiller to the edge of the bed.

The sleep was going quickly from the young Creek's eyes, and he stared at the big badge on the black man bending over him.

“Goddamn, mister, what's the matter?” he said, his voice thick with sleep. “What you men want?”

“We want to talk, Skitty,” Oscar Schiller said. Garret pulled the Creek to his feet. He stood half-bent, the front of his underwear still standing out stiffly.

“Goddamn, mister. I gotta go outside. I gotta piss.”

“Not yet, you're not,” Garret said. “Where's that colored man works for you?”

Cornkiller blinked, still stooped, staring at the cocked pistol in the black marshal's hand.

“Goddamn. What is it you men want?”

“Where's that hired man?” Moma July said, slamming the muzzle of the shotgun into Skitty Cornkiller's side. The young Creek drew back, his breath hissing through his clenched teeth, his eyes suddenly gone savage. He sputtered a string of unintelligible words, each one snapping out like popcorn from a hot pan.

“Goddamn, mister, don't poke me again with that thing. My man's out the barn. He sleeps in the barn.”

“All right. Joe, you and Officer July go get him,” Schiller said. “Come on, you, we'll get you outside.”

They pushed Skitty Cornkiller out the front door, Burris Garret still holding the gun in one hand as he shoved the young Creek with the other. Cornkiller stumbled to the edge of the porch, rumbling with the buttons on his underwear. He turned away from us as though embarrassed to have us watch him relieve himself. Before he was completely finished, Burris Garret had him by the small of the back, pulling him inside.

The black marshal snapped handcuffs on one of Cornkiller's wrists, locking the other ring to the frame of the bed. By the time we moved to the back porch, Joe Mountain and the Creek policeman were coming toward the house, before them a black man pulling suspenders up over his shoulders. He was barefooted but on his head was a black Texas hat, and even from across the yard I could see the button on the crown.

“Stupid bastard,” Oscar Schiller said softly. Then he turned to me and spoke vehemently. “Don't ever forget this, Eben. It's the stupid ones who are dangerous. They haven't got the sense to think ahead and they'll kill you quick as a snake strikes. A smart one always thinks twice about it.”

“What is it you gentlemens want?” the man asked. They pulled him over, sat him down on the porch, and manacled his arms around one of the roof posts. He was smiling, showing widely spaced teeth, two of which were gold-capped. His face was scarred on either cheek and I thought at first it was some kind of crude tattooing. Thick, bushy hair that had started to gray hung below his hat. He was a powerful man, the muscles of his arms and shoulders showing through the thin blue cotton shirt he wore. I judged him to be about forty-five.

“Joe, go in and watch that man we got chained to the bed and send Burris out here. I want him here.”

We waited for Burris Garret to come out, Schiller dipping into his can of snuff and cocaine with a matchstick. When the black marshal stepped out, our prisoner's grin widened.

“Howdy, Marshal,” he said. “I sure glad to see you here. I thought these men come to rob us. Why they got these things on me?”

He rattled the handcuffs against the porch post. Garret stepped before him and now the pistol was out of sight under his coat.

“We need to ask you some questions, old man, and we don't want you runnin' off.”

“I ain't gonna run nowhere.”

“What's your name, old man?”

“Nason Grube.”

“You a citizen of the Creek Nation?”

“No, sir, I ain't,” he said. The sweat had begun to roll down the sides of his face, and as he spoke he flicked his lips with a long pink tongue and looked around at us, a question in his muddy brown eyes. “Is your men after me, Marshal?”

“You just answer the questions—don't ask any,” Garret said. “If you're not a citizen of the Creek Nation, what are you doin' here?”

“I works for Mr. Cornkiller on this ole farm. I come down here from Missouri and worked on the construction when they was buildin' the KATY line. I had me a permit onct. But I ain't no more. I guess you caught me out on that, Marshal, but I ain't gonna run off nowheres.”

“So you're an illegal?”

“Yes, sir, Marshal. I never was a Creek. I was a free Missouri nigger come to work the railroad, and I was legal then, but now I'm not.”

“Where'd you get those marks on your face?”

He laughed. “I bet you thought they was like them marks on that Osage's face you got with you, that big man. But they ain't.” His pink tongue flicked across his lips in a quick, darting movement. “Mr. Cornkiller sometimes gets mad with me and hits me with a stick of stove wood. He don't mean no harm. He's always sorry after he sobers up.”

Garret glanced at Oscar Schiller and moved back. The white marshal, chewing his matchstick, stepped off the porch, moving close to Nason Grube.

“Where'd you get that hat, Nason?”

“Mr. Cornkiller give it to me. My ole hat 'bout wore out. So he give me this one.”

“Where'd he get it?”

“He never said. I guess in Okmulgee or Muskogee, maybe.”

“You sell whiskey with Mr. Cornkiller, don't you, Nason?”

“No, sir, I never done that.” He seemed to realize only then that we were on more serious business than rousting out illegals in The Nations. He sat with his legs over the edge of the porch, his large feet far apart, the toes splayed in the dust. As Oscar Schiller continued, Nason Grube stopped looking at any of us and let his eyes wander across the yard to his little garden patch, as though he expected some kind of help from his wilted plants.

“You went off to the Choctaw Nation not long ago, didn't you? You went down there and got yourself into some trouble, didn't you?”

Almost imperceptibly, Nason Grube pulled back against the manacles, knowing now that our business wasn't bootlegging, either.

“No, sir, I never done that.”

Schiller pulled the hat off the man's head, causing him to start violently. He handed it to me, and the red silk lining shone in the rising sun.

“Keep that safe in a saddlebag. We'll need it in Fort Smith.”

“I ain't done nothin' to go to Fort Smith,” Nason Grube said, his voice quavering. He was still contemplating his garden.

“Nason, I'm serving a warrant on you for murder and rape in the Choctaw Nation. You got one of them John Does, Eben?”

An expression of disbelief crossed the man's face and he pulled back against his cuffs. With the hat off, he looked older, his head covered with a graying mat of curly hair.

“No! I ain't never done no such of a thing,” he said. “I ain't never in my whole life done no such of a thing.”

I read him enough of the warrant to ensure that he understood why he was being arrested. All of it seemed incomprehensible to him. He sat there stunned, his mouth open, the pink tongue flicking out and the sweat running down the sides of his coal black face.

“Officer July, you'd best keep a watch on Nason here,” Schiller said. “Now, we better get to Cornkiller.”

Before we went inside, Schiller said to me, “You remember that note we found in Johnny Boins's room?”

“I've been thinking about it ever since July told us Cornkiller's name,” I said. “They had a man called C looking for that horse. You think it was Cornkiller?”