Cherokee (16 page)

But he wouldn't rise to it. “Naw, I didn't mean of all the hired hands. I meant, with all this money involved it would look like you'd of kept it in the family. Norris or Ben.”

“Hays, if you don't know by now that you're a better hand in a tight place than Norris, I'm not going to tell you so.”

“I was thinking more of Ben.”

I didn't say anything. It was a question I'd of liked answered myself. But I couldn't very well tell him Howard had forbidden it without giving me any reasons. Hell, I could understand why Hays was curious as to the sense of it. So was I. I finally said, “Ben was needed on the ranch. We're cutting the herd for market and I want him to learn a little more about the cattle end of our business. Knowing horses ain't enough to run a ranch.”

“You planning on going somewhere?”

I shrugged. “Running around the country with what we got in this saddlebag is a damn good way to make a job come open.”

“That makes me feel good,” Hays said. “Now that jest makes me feel plumb wonderful. Oh, yeah!”

“You can always cut and run. Ain't your money.”

That could have hurt his feelings since he liked to think of himself as family, but instead he said something he'd said before. “You and Ben is shore different from Norris. You ever take note of that?”

I just looked at him and shook my head. “Naw! You think so? I thought we was as alike as three peas in a pod.”

“You said oncet you figured he must have favored yore mother. What was she like?”

The memory of losing her was still a little painful, even after all the years. It wasn't something I liked to talk about, but I felt I owed Hays a little leeway. I said, “Oh, she was kind of delicate, ladylike. She was from Georgia. Just like Howard. I don't recollect if she was an old flame of his or if he met her while he was driving cattle up there during the War of Rebellion. The Civil War, as they call it up North.” I looked off, trying to remember her. “She made us behave ourselves at the table. Made us wash and such. Fussed at us when we got in fights. Talked a lot about us remembering to be gentlemen.” I laughed slightly. “I think Norris was the only one listened to her.”

“Was she sweet?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Kind of embarrassed me. I was scared to hug her very hard on account of she seemed like she might break.” I shook my head again. “She just wasn't cut out for this kind of country. This kind of life. In the end I reckon that's what she died of more than anything else. She was like Nora, always talking about the country getting civilized. Except it was a hell of a lot less civilized then than it is now.” I swilled the brandy down and got up. “We better get moving. I damn sure don't want to miss this train.”

Everything was as we'd left it in the stock car. The horses were fine with plenty of water and hay. They were just kind of restless, confined to the little space as they were. Every once in a while one of them would stamp his feet, making a loud noise, or fight his head a little bit, sawing his head up and down and making the hardware on his bridle jingle. I transferred half the gold back into Hays's saddlebags and we got ourselves settled. It was good and dark. I had the car door shut and locked from the inside. Wouldn't be anybody getting in without making a ruckus. We settled down to wait. Hays was yawning already, though I could barely see him and him not three feet away, it was that dark. He said, “Boy, I'm gonna sleep tonight.”

I didn't say nothing about the amount of sleep he'd gotten that afternoon. I figured it was better to let a sleeping Hays lie.

We got out of Fort Worth about eight-fifteen. After that it wasn't too long until we were starting to make speed. I sat on the floor and leaned back against a hay bale. I didn't feel a damn bit guilty about taking the train and not going cross-country on horseback as Howard had wanted. Right about then, I figured, we'd be making camp somewhere short of Austin with about three-hundred miles left to go. And it would probably be raining too. I heard Hays get up and go to rustling around with something. He said, “You want yore bedroll?”

I yawned. I was tireder than I usually was at such an hour and I wondered why. Then I remembered I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. “Yeah, throw it on over here.”

I felt it thump down by my side. My eyes were starting to adjust to the dark of the car, and I could make out Hays's dim form as he went about bedding down. I said, “You light a smoke, be damn shore you don't go to sleep before you're sure it's out. This car is full of hay and ain't a fire brigade in the country could catch us if we catch on fire.”

“I wuz jest thinkin' of mentionin' the same thing to you.”

“Sure you were,” I said.

I rolled out my sleeping blankets. Then I shucked the heavy jacket I'd been wearing, took off my gun belt, hat, and boots, loosened my jeans, and crawled in between the blankets. Since I didn't have a saddle for a pillow and, as cold as it was starting to get, didn't want to use a blanket for one, I just wadded up my sheepskin-lined coat and put it to use to keep my head off the car floor. I had the bottle of whiskey handy, and I took a good pull and then sung out to ask Hays if he wanted a drink.

He said from somewhere up near the horses, “I got me one. Piece of one, anyway. Say, you notice it's gettin' right brisk? Where the hell we headed, the North Pole?”

He was right. Rolling along at forty miles an hour like we were, with the cold wind just whipping through the slats of the car, it was more than a little chilly. I said, “I noticed you got up there by the horses so you could suck a little warmth off them.”

“Naw, was the horses wanted me to git up here an' keep them warm. Hell, they gonna find us froze stiff in the momin'.”

“Shut up, Hays,” I said. “I'm trying not to think about it.”

I wrapped up in my blankets as best I could, pulling them up to where they were nearly over my head. The wind was still nearly going through me. I finally got up, stumbling around in the dark, and pushed three bales of hay together so they blocked most of the wind off me. Then I went through the chore of getting back in my blankets and getting them adjusted again. It had been a lot of trouble, but it had been worth it.

Hays said, “Boss?”

“What!”

“Will you git up an' take a leak fer me? It's too cold to git out from under the covers an' I'm about to pop.”

“Hays, if you bother me again I'm going to make you jump. You was upset you didn't get asked to jump, well, you just let me get relaxed again and open your yap and you'll get your wish.”

I heard him rustling around, getting up to take a leak. I said, “You better be damn shore that don't spray back in this direction.”

Then I heard him cursing under his breath and stamping around toward the back of the car, getting past me. After a little he came up the side of the car, heading back to his blankets, going “Brrrrrrr” and hugging himself, his teeth chattering.

But finally everything settled down. Wrapped up like I was, my own body heat kind of spread around and got trapped in the blankets and I commenced to warm up. I lay there with my eyes shut wishing that I was home with Nora and the rest of my family and my cattle and in my own bed. But of course, wishing wasn't going to do it. I got to thinking about Nora and what a pistol she was and about what had happened the last time she'd dragged me to church. The preacher had been preaching and I was about half asleep. All of a sudden he'd said, “Everybody that wants to go to heaven, stand up. Stand up if you want to go to heaven.” Well, everybody stood up but me. I'd still been about half asleep and had missed the whole occasion. Going home in the buggy, Nora had been quiet most of the way. Just before we got home she'd said, in a kind of hurt, uncertain voice, “Justa, don't you want to go to heaven?” Well, it had caught me off balance. I'd had no idea what she was talking about. So I'd said that yes, of course, I wanted to go to heaven. She'd said, “Well, then how come you didn't stand when the Reverend said for everybody that wanted to go to heaven to get up?” I'd looked over at her, figuring I was in trouble, and said the first thing that came into my mind. I'd said, “Why, hell, I thought he was getting up a load for right then and there.”

Naturally she'd smacked me on the chest with her little fist and said, “Oh, you heathen! Is nothing sacred to you? I swear, Justa Williams, you are going to joke yourself into serious trouble one of these days. Why, that's almost sacrilegious.”

But I'd got her to laughing a little bit later, and she'd admitted that such an interpretation might have been put on the situation. Sometimes I think she acted churchy and religious because it was expected of her. Not that she wasn't a true Christian, she was, but she kind of put on the dog about it like my mother had and Nora's mother and all the good matrons I'd ever known. I'd one time asked her if she knew why Baptists never made love standing up. Naturally she'd acted horrified and righteous about such a question, but it hadn't kept her from saying no, she didn't know why. Why? Then when I'd told her it was because they were afraid God would think they were dancing, she'd done about the same: hit me in the chest and blushed and said I was outrageous and was storing up sin and suffering for myself. But later, I'd caught her in the kitchen giggling to herself.

Oh, Nora was fun to be with. Especially in bed.

I shivered and listened to the creak of the car and the sound of the horses stirring around and the whistle of the wind. It was uncomfortable, but it sure as hell beat making thirty or forty miles a day.

The train didn't get into Chickasha until after seven the next morning. Hays and I were grateful for it running late. The delay at least let the sun get up enough to take the brittle edge off the cold. The station agent told us it was the earliest norther he could remember in his thirty years in Oklahoma. That was small consolation to us, knowing how mild it probably was back home. But then Hays said, as we were going back out into the rail yard to see about getting our horses dismounted from the train, “Boss, you realize this blue norther would have caught us out on the open prairie about twenty miles either side of Austin if we hadn't of took the train?”

I nodded. “Yes, that is something to be thankful for.” But I thought to myself that, if the norther had made it all the way to the coast, which it mostly didn't, it would have caught me in my bed or sitting in my kitchen drinking coffee if Howard hadn't come up with this godawful request of his.

We went back to our car, which had been detached from the train, which had already pulled out for Oklahoma City, and stood around waiting for the railroad hired hands to bring down a wooden ramp so we could lead our horses down it. Hays said, “Boss, I'm gonna say something. Might make you mad, might not. But I'm gonna say it just the same. I
still
can't understand what you done. You let that horse thief off scot-free! Not only let him off without puttin' a mark on him, you give him money on top of that! If I live to be a hunnert I'll never unnerstan' that. The man was a thief! I didn't figure he ought to be shot, but I'm damned if I can see you re-wardin' him.”

There really wasn't much I could answer to that. I'd sort of surprised myself. I'd meant to make the young man jump off the train while it was running pretty fast and leave it to Providence to punish him. In the jump he could have gotten off light or he could have broken his neck. Instead I'd given him money and then practically let him step off the train. I said, “I don't know, Hays. The way the fellow acted and talked—he said he wasn't a horse thief and I believed him.”

“What you think that was he was leading out of here, a big dog?”

“No, I mean I don't think he would have gone through with it. And even if he had, he'd of been sorry later.”

“And we'd still been a horse short. But he made out better this way. Got cash money for not stealin' the horse.”

I smiled and looked down. “Well, I had deprived him of his principal asset. I took his Colt revolver away from him and flung it away.”

“Which you've done with other parties without feelin' no need to hand 'em a wad of cash.”

I could see two railroad hired hands hurrying our way carrying a ramp between them. I said, “You figure I ought to have shot the man?”

“That ain't far from what you'd normally done. No questions, no answers, just a quick settlement. The man was stealin' the goddam horse!”

I shrugged. “Guess I'm getting soft.”

“Not whar I be concerned you ain't.”

Well, it was a puzzle, but I didn't have time to think about it. The railroad hands got there and put the ramp up to the car door, and me and Hays went aboard and led the horses down the ramp and out onto the ground. They were rested and frisky in the cold air. We'd already fixed the saddle stirrups and the bridles, so we just mounted up and Hays took the packhorse on lead and we started toward town. Chickasha didn't appear all that big, maybe three thousand souls, but it was a kind of funny-looking town. The depot was on the north end, so we took our time and rode all the way down the main street and then turned back the way we'd come. It seemed to me that the town, the business section anyway, was cut right in two. The northern half appeared to be Indian, while the southern end was white. It wasn't anything announced, it was just something that I felt. There were no Indian words on the stores in the northern end or anything like that; in fact, both ends looked pretty much the same. About the only thing that was noticeable was that there weren't any saloons among the northern bunch of businesses. And no churches either. All that was to the south. But there was one big building at the far end of the town that was built out of logs. It was just one story but it was a mighty big one story, and it appeared old and important and well-built.

After we'd made the tour Hays said, “Well, what now?”

I looked at my watch. It was just half past seven. There weren't many people on the street and not many stores had opened up. Looking toward the north I could see a low range of hills and, it appeared, a number of teepees, even in that late day and age. I said, “Well, let's get some breakfast. I don't reckon that Tribal Council is open yet.”

Ray pointed across the street at a cafe. “That looks like a good 'un.”

But I said carefully, “Naw, let's go back down to the south end of town. There's a big hotel there. You can't go wrong on hotel grub. Especially breakfasts.”

There were surprisingly few customers when we went into the dining room of the hotel. We shucked off our heavy jackets, taking pleasure in the warmth coming from the wood stove in the corner of the place. Hays said, “My goodness, this shore feels good. I swear it's cold enough outside to snow.” He dropped the saddlebag he'd been carrying.

We got sat down, and a man in a greasy apron came over to take our order. We both just ordered ham and eggs and grits and biscuits. I was surprised to see grits as far north as we were, but there they were on the bill of fare. While the man was pouring us some coffee I asked him if that big building up north was the Tribal Council.

He'd been giving me looks ever since we'd sat down, and now he set the big coffeepot down and give me a good staring over. He said, “You Injun?”

Hays laughed, but I said, “Not that I know of. Why?”

He picked up the coffeepot and filled my cup. “'Cause Injuns ain't allowed in here.”

I said, “How come?”

He looked at me like I'd just fell off a sour apple tree. “You ain't from around here?”

“Never been here before in my life.”

He said, “You are smack dab in the middle of the Cherokee reservation. Damn few places left fer white folks around here. We be tryin' to keep it that way.”

I said. “I taken notice when we were coming up the street that it looked like it was divided. I ain't got no good reason to think that, but the north end looks Indian. And I don't mean because I saw just Indians there.”

He nodded, still holding the coffeepot handle by an end of his apron. “They's a line right through the middle of town. You can't see it, but it's thar. The Injuns keep to they end.”

I said, “They can't come down here?”

The waiter said, “They got the money they can come down here and buy a shirt or a saddle or a pair of jeans or a bucket, but they can't buy no liquor or eat down here or use a hotel.”

I said, “What about a white man? Can he go up to the north end?”

The waiter was a grim-faced sort of man about fifty who looked like he could use a shave and a bath. He said, “Yeah. Hell, they dyin' fer us to come down there an' spend our money. Yeah, a white man can go all over town, git anythang he wants.”

Hays said, “Thet don't seem very square.”

I gave him a quick look, but the waiter kind of leaned forward and said, “Talk like that around here gen'lly comes from folks lookin' fer trouble. Messin' in other folks' business.”

I jumped in before Hays could say anything. “We're just passing through. I'm lookin' for a fellow and figured to ask at the Tribal Council about him.”

The waiter relaxed a little. I guessed he figured we were sticking our nose in where it didn't belong. He said, “Yeah, it's that big building at the north end of town. If yore man's Injun or married to Injun they'll know. Got records go way back. Ah'll say this fer them Cherokees. If I got to put up with Injuns the Cherokees be the best of the bunch. Even if the gummit does mollycoddle the shit outten 'em. All Injuns is lazy, worthless bastards, but yore Cherokee is 'bout the best of a poor lot.”

Hays said, “You said they couldn't get a drink this side of town. Ah didn't see no saloons lookin' north.”

The waiter said, “Huh! They got they saloons. Jest don't call 'em that is all. They's a place up the street called the Cigar Store. Only don't go in there 'xpectin' to buy a smoke. Place sells whuskey. You kin git all the whuskey you want on the Injun side. Cheaper too than crost the line. Thet's wha'r I buy mine to take home. Course they ain't suppose to have it. Law says they ain't supposed to be none on the reservation 'cept what's controlled by white men. This end of town is knowed as a sutler's store. All of it. The very hotel you a-sittin' in. In fact, oncet, it was jest a sutler's store. Gummit give who owned it hunnert acres. Town growed up round it an' it jest natcherly growed. Line down the middle of town is the property line fer the sutler's place. So all this is private prop'ity. Injuns jest tacked on they part of it at the line.”

Hays said, “Well, if the law says they can't have it, where they get it? An' how come it's cheaper?”

The waiter moved away, toward the kitchen. He said, over his shoulder, “Ast them Injuns. Beats the hell out of me.”

We ate our breakfast when it came and didn't have no more words with the waiter. I didn't really know what good it was going to do to ask at the Tribal Council for Charlie Stevens since he wasn't an Indian, but Lew Vara said they kept up with just about everybody, and especially anybody that would have had much dealings with the Indians. I figured a sawmill operator would have had to have had a few Indian customers. But it didn't make much difference. The train had brought us here, and it wasn't going to take more than a few minutes to ask and it certainly couldn't hurt anything.

I paid our score and we walked out of the hotel buttoning our jackets. It seemed to have warmed up, though I didn't know if it was the weather or the good breakfast we had in our belly.

Hays said, “That ol' boy wadn't especially fond of Injuns, was he?”

“You got to remember, Hays, wasn't that long ago that an Indian wasn't much different than a panther or a cougar or a bear except they were a hell of a lot more dangerous.”

“Yeah, but I've knowed some Cherokees. Even worked oncet with one on a ranch up in the Panhandle. Damned good cowhand. They suppose t' have been a sight more civilized than even some of the whites or Mes'kins round here.”

“Yeah, I've heard that,” I said. “Howard said they were a far piece from the Comanches or some of them other tribes would just as soon skin you alive as look at you.”

“So where does that ol' boy waitin' tables git off actin' so high and mighty about them? I don't see whar he's got all thet much to brag about, hustlin' hash an' pourin' coffee.”

“His kind have always got to have somebody to look down on so they won't know how low they really are. Anyway, keep your mouth shut about the subject. We ain't up here doin' good works for the church; we're carrying this here worrisome gold and I'm in a hurry to get shut of it.”

While we were putting the saddlebags back on the horses he looked across at me and said, in that sneaky way of his, “You know, I can see whar that ol' boy didn't want to give you no breakfast. You was to let yore hair grow out and braid it an' git a little paint on yore face, why, you'd be right at home in a teepee. I never noticed it before it was called to my attention. I reckon I'd better call you 'Chief' from now on instead of Boss.”

I gave him a look. “You better be worrying about what I call you. How about 'out-of-a-job'?”

We mounted up and rode slowly down the street toward the big log building at the end. I could almost tell when we passed the line in the middle of town, though there wasn't a single marker. I guessed it was just something everybody knew about and understood. I agreed with Hays; it seemed like a damn poor way to treat some folks who, from all appearances, were doing a pretty good job of being civilized.

We tied up in front of the big building that I had guessed right was the Tribal Council. I left Hays to watch the horses and the gold and went inside. It was plenty light enough to see. They had a whole rack of windows opening on the north and some back to the east. I went into a kind of outer room. There were three or four desks and some men sitting behind them working over papers. They were all dressed in regular clothes, and only one of the men had long hair in braids. I picked out an older-looking man and went up to him. He looked up as I approached. There was a chair beside his desk. He said, “Howdy.”

The man had some gray in his black hair, but his face didn't look much older than mine. I said, “Howdy. I'm looking for a fellow. Hope you can help me. He's an old friend of my father's and I've come up from Texas to find him.”

The man said, “Is he Cherokee?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Is he Indian?”

“No.”

“Married to Cherokee?”

I smiled slightly. “A friend of mine who used to live up here said the Tribal Council kind of kept up with everybody. I hate to waste your time.”

“Oh, you're not wasting my time. That is what I'm here for. Sit down and tell me the name of this person. Maybe he is in our files. Who can say?”

When I sat down he said, putting out his hand, “My name is Joe Slowfox.”

I shook hands with him and told him mine.

He said, “So you have come up from Texas. A long distance?”

“Yes,” I said. “I live down in the south.”