Cherokee (7 page)

“If you want me to.”

“I'll let you know.”

I gave him a little salute, and then walked down the stairs, out of the bank, and over to the general mercantile store that was owned by Nora's daddy, Lonnie Parker.

It was cool and dim inside, just as it was always cool and dim inside every mercantile I'd ever been in in my life. Lonnie was standing by the front counter, by the cash register, where he could nearly always be found. I figured his motto was “Stay close to the money and then you'll never have to wonder where it is.”

He give me a big hello just like he always did. I wasn't just his son-in-law; as the head of the Half-Moon I was his biggest customer. I didn't know which cut more ice with Lonnie. Folks said that Lonnie had been known to close up before midnight and on days other than Christmas and Thanksgiving, but I couldn't honestly say I'd ever seen it happen. No, that was a lie. He'd closed half a day when Nora and I had gotten married.

He said, “Well, son, just in town for a bit?”

“Had some banking business to do.”

“Just stop by to visit or was there something you was needing?”

“Two kegs of nails.”

He took out the little stub of pencil he had behind his ear and crouched over his order book. “What weight?”

“Tenpenny will be fine,” I said.

I watched as he laboriously wrote out the order. When he was through he said, “What else?”

“That's all. Except I want you to deliver those kegs over to Norris's office. You know, on the second floor of the bank building. Just shove them over in a corner of his office.”

He frowned. “Justa, if you need 'em before yore regular Friday delivery, why, I could send them out special. Wouldn't be no extra charge.”

I shook my head. “No, no, that's not necessary. Just taking them over to Norris's office before Friday will work fine.”

The whole idea worried him. Lonnie was a tall, skinny drink of water who was fast losing all his top hair. For the life of me I never could figure how he stayed so skinny when his wife was the best cook in Matagorda County. Worked it off counting his money, I figured. But then, I didn't want to be making fun of Lonnie's ways. He was a merchant and that was the way merchants were. Besides, if it hadn't of been for him I wouldn't have Nora. He said, “Justa, them kegs are pretty heavy. Weigh close to fifty pound apiece.”

Yes, I thought, and they were going to maybe weigh a good deal more than that when I got through with them. I said, “Don't matter. But listen, Lonnie, make sure your delivery man takes his mallet and loosens the tops on both kegs. They are hell to get off if you ain't got the right tool.”

“Oh, so you're going to be doing some work right there in the bank?”

I said, “I've got to get going, Lonnie.” I was trying to get away before he could think of anything else to ask me, like what were we going to do with two kegs of big nails inside a bank. It appeared that when a party set out to take $25,000 in gold to Oklahoma it called for questions from all sides. And I hadn't even told Ray Hays yet about the trip. The way he was, with more curiosity than a pet raccoon, he'd likely nail me to the ground with questions. And of course, I wouldn't be able to answer them, not and keep to Howard's wishes. But it was going to seem damn strange, even to one of Hays's turn of mind, that we were carrying two kegs of tenpenny nails to Oklahoma.

Lonnie said, “Here! Don't run off. It's just now going on for ten o'clock. Couple more hours it'll be lunchtime. Always room for another plate.”

“That's tempting, Lonnie. But I got to see the sheriff and then I need to get home. We're gathering cattle.”

I went on out, turned right, and walked down the boardwalk to Lew Vara's office. The sheriff was in, sitting behind his desk with his boots up on a corner, his arms folded, and a cigarillo in his mouth. I said, “Don't you worry about them voters, Lou. They can see you're on the job even if you ain't got your spurs on.”

“I'm thinkin',” he said. “Job requires a certain amount of that.”

I sat down in a wooden chair across from him. “Well, you'd want to take it careful on such a practice. Man could hurt hisself.”

He brought his boots down to the floor with a thump. “What the hell you doing in town?”

Lew and I went back a lot of years to a time when we were both about nineteen and had done our level best to kill each other in the worst fistfight I'd ever had. He'd left the country after that, and had almost gotten on the other side of the law. He'd gone up into the Oklahoma Territory, where I was headed, and fallen in with bad company. Of course, there wasn't no shortage of that commodity up there then, or now as far as that went. But he'd come to his senses and come back home before he'd gone too far. As a favor for some well-appreciated help he'd given me and my family, we'd backed him for sheriff some seven or eight years back, and had had no cause to ever be sorry.

But just looking at him you'd be more likely to take him for a bandit than a sheriff. You looked at him from one direction he looked like a Mexican. From another side he looked like an Indian. And in some ways, he didn't look like either. He was about two inches shorter than I was, but about the same weight. Most of that weight was packed in his upper body, his shoulders and his arms and his big hands and neck. Lou was not anybody to take lightly. He wasn't particularly good with a handgun, but then he didn't have to be. He had a presence about him that could usually stop trouble before it got started.

I said, “Oh, getting some business set up I've got to tend to.”

“I help?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Friday afternoon I'll be coming out of the bank with twenty-five thousand dollars in gold hidden in two nail kegs. Be me and Ray Hays. We'll leave town riding north. I'm trying to keep this as quiet as I can, but I wish you'd back-trail me for about three or four miles. Make sure nobody in town has got wind of it and is looking to make a payday. Hang back about a mile, mile and a half.”

“You don't want me to go further?”

That was Lou. Tell him you're riding out of town with $25,000 in gold in two nail kegs, and he don't even raise an eyebrow, much less ask any questions.

I said, “Naw, we're going a pretty good ways. I don't think the voters could spare you as long as I'll be gone.”

He raised his arms and stretched. “I'm sorry to hear that. I won't have anybody to drink with. At least anybody that pays their share.”

I got out a cigarillo and lit it. “You still remember the geography around Oklahoma, don't you?”

“Palm of my hand. That where you're headed?”

“Yeah. Anadarko. Any idea where that is?”

He leaned his elbows on the desk. “Smack dab in the middle of the Indian Nation. My people, Cherokee.”

I said, “I wish you'd get it straight. One day you ain't got no Indian blood, next day you do.”

“Hell, I've always thought you had more Injun in you than I do. I swear there's a war chief somewhere in your background.”

“Never mind about that,” I said. “How far you figure it is up there?”

He gave me a look. “You don't mean by horseback?”

I nodded. I didn't know what there was to say.

He said, “A hell of a long ways. You make fifty miles a day, and that's pushing it over some parts of the country between here and there, and you'll be on the trail ten days at least.”

I winced. God, ten days going. Then God only knows how long it would take me to find Charlie Stevens and get my business over with with him. And then the trip home. At least that could be by train. Still, it was a hell of a long time away from home. I said, “If you were to go and try and locate somebody up there how would you start?”

He let out a breath and thought. After a moment he said, “Well, if they was Indian, I'd go to the Tribal Council right there in Chickasha. They got records on everybody. An' even if he ain't Indian, they know more about what goes on in the whole state than the governor. Naw, I'd check in with the Tribal Council before I did anything. Of course you're not telling me you're going horseback all the way to Oklahoma to see somebody you don't know where is. You wouldn't do that, not even you.”

I got up. “You're right. Even I wouldn't do that.”

“You got time to go down to Crook's, get a beer?”

I shook my head and said I'd better get on back to the ranch. I started to turn for the door, but on a thought came back to Lew. I told him what Norris had said about Shay Jordan coming to his office and advising him there was more than one way to settle a land dispute outside of a lawsuit. I said, “Lew, I wish you'd keep an eye and an ear on this business. I've warned Ben to stay clear unless somebody actually starts shooting, but it worries me, me going off like this.”

“Aw, hell, that Shay is just a smart-aleck kid.”

“He ain't no kid. And that gun he's always packing is full growed.”

“You want me to ride out there and talk to Rex Jordan? Tell him to hobble the boy?”

I thought about it a minute. I finally said, “Naw, it's liable to cause more trouble than help. They're liable to think we're picking on them, running to the sheriff. Let's just let it lie. Maybe nothing else will happen. Get the damn matter in a courtroom and get it settled.”

Lew just shook his head. “Them Jordans must be damn fools. Hell, yore daddy has
occupied
that piece of land for thirty years. That's a proven fact. Do they really think they can come along now and make a real claim?”

I shrugged. “I think they're just shaking the money tree. Hoping some will fall off. They know they can't win, but they're hoping we'll give them something just to get rid of them. Of course if we did that, then everybody and his brother would be trying the same game.”

“Well, don't let it plague you. I'll keep a close eye on the situation, and if any of them Jordans so much as spit on the sidewalk I'll find a place for them to have a good long think on the matter.”

I told Lew I'd see him Friday, and then went out the door and down to the bank, where my horse was. I was still riding the sorrel gelding and liking him better every day. He was a good traveling horse, and I had pretty much made up my mind to use him for the Oklahoma trip. He was a long three-year-old, nearly a four, and he had a gait that just ate up the ground. I got on him and turned him east, toward the gulf and toward home. If I hurried I could get there in time for lunch with Nora.

I was just a bit out of town when I heard someone calling my name. Whoever he was, he was just leaving town and coming toward me on the little wagon track that ran due east. The rider was still a good quarter of a mile away so I couldn't see him clearly, but I could hear him yelling, “Williams! Williams! Williams, damnit, stop!”

I pulled up, turned my horse, and waited to see who could have such important business with me they had to shout my family name all over the prairie. The rider came on, bringing his horse at a hard gallop. I sat my horse, waiting, watching him come on. At a hundred yards I thought it was Rex Jordan. At sixty or fifty yards I was sure it was, though I'd only seen the man a couple of times. About forty yards away he started pulling his horse up, but the animal was hot and was fighting his head and didn't want to stop. I watched Jordan sawing on the reins, ruining the horse's mouth, standing up in the stirrups and using his weight on the horse's mouth. Finally he got him down to a sideways canter, the horse still flinging his head every which way, doing his best to tell Jordan to quit yanking on the goddam reins, and then finally down to a nervous, fast-footed walk. He came straight at me, his right arm pointed out, a finger sticking out of the fist he was pointing at me. He yelled, even though we were only a few yards apart, “Williams, I want to talk to you, by gawd!”

He was red in the face. I didn't know if it was from anger or from trying to cold-jaw his horse. I said, “Well, here I am. Talk.”

He pushed his horse right up next to mine, so close we could have touched. Jordan was a tough-faced man with a scar under his eye. He might have been in his late forties, but his body looked hard and thick. He was a good deal shorter than me, but he was beefy and bullnecked. I noticed, as I had before, that he wore the narrow-brimmed hat of a man who wasn't native to Texas.

He jabbed his finger at me and said, “I'm gonna warn you an' I ain't gonna warn ya but this oncet.... That high-hat brother'n of yours, that fancy-pants Norris er whatever his name is—he goes to pullin' them bullyboy stunts on my boy Shay a'gin an' we goin' to war, you unnerstan' me?”

His finger was coming a little closer to my face than I cared to have it. I reached up and knocked his arm away with my left hand. “Jordan, I don't know what the hell you are talking about. You got a complaint with me you calm down and make some sense. Don't come riding up to me yelling your fool head off about goin' to war. I don't have the slightest idea what you are talking about.”

He was still so mad spit was flecking out of his mouth when he talked. “I'll by gawd tell you what I'm talkin' 'bout. I'm talkin' 'bout all you goddam Williams and your goddam bullyboy ways. You don't own this goddam country n' it's about time you—”

“Get off your horse.”

“An' you messin' with the wrong bunch of folks you come courtin' trouble with us. Tellin' my boy you's gonna run us outten the country. Lis'sen, by gawd, I'm gonna tell you a thang or two. I—”

“I said, GET OFF YOUR HORSE!”