Ride the Panther (13 page)

“No. That’s a role I’d not care to assume with you. There’d be another a sight more satisfying.”

Her eyebrows arched. “And what would that be?” she asked, more than passing interested.

Before he could answer, a gunshot sounded from across the street. Jesse turned toward the window as the door to the bank across the street was flung open. Buxom Rose Minley, the wife of the president of the Chahta Greek Territorial Bank, lifted up the hem of her gray woolen skirt to reveal a set of shapely ankles as she dashed out into the middle of the street and screamed for someone to fetch Parson Marshal T. Alan Booth. The banker’s lady was a tall attractive woman in her late twenties whose high-pitched voice had a piercing quality that carried for several blocks as she pleaded for assistance. “They’re killing him! The Tellicos are killing Lucius and robbing the bank!” The marshal was blocks away. Rose Minley’s husband would be dead before Booth ever arrived.

“For the love of heaven, isn’t there someone who will help us!”

Of course there was.

M
OSES TELLICO CLAIMED TO
be the handsome brother. He was a couple of years younger than Theotis and a couple of inches shorter. His features were dark from a life spent outdoors. A black mustache covered his upper lip, its waxed tips drooping down below his chin. His nose was crooked, flattened along one side, and made his entire face seem slightly askew. His cold blue eyes, like those of his brother, were clouded and blurry from too much drink. Sober, they could be hard as flint, like the Tellicos themselves. Moses, despite his fierce appearance, had an ego as fragile as a thespian’s. He kept his short-cropped black hair well oiled, parted in the middle, and combed flat against his skull. The perfume of lilac water clung to his woolen coat and pullover cotton shirt.

Now Theotis had no illusions as to his beauty. He was a burly, heavyset brawler with a black beard as long as a bib and a row of broken crooked teeth behind his smile. Both brothers claimed to be part Cherokee, part Choctaw, with a little Welsh blood thrown in on their father’s side of the family. The net result was a pair of backwoods boys who lived by their own rules and saw little need for the civilizing laws of the community, which made it all the more difficult for Lucius Minley to explain why the Chahta Creek Territorial Bank had the right and, yes, even the fiscal obligation to foreclose on the Tellicos’ farm.

“Let me get this straight, now,” Theotis asked, and blew the curl of smoke from the barrel of his Starr revolver. It was one of a matched set that had belonged to their father. That and the land and a penchant for blood feuds had been Old Man Tellico’s legacy to his offspring. “Pa give us that land. He’s buried there alongside Ma.” Theotis doffed his hat and held it over his heart. “And now you aim to run us off!” He tugged his hat back on his head.

“It’s not me.” Lucius Minley tried yet again to state his position. He looked like the clerk he used to be, a shy, nervous little man whose most ardent wish in all the world was to kick the dust of Chahta Creek from his bootheels and leave the Indian Territory once and for all—perhaps to settle back East, where ruffians like the Tellicos were kept locked up instead of being allowed the run of the streets.

Though timid, Lucius was no fool and knew that if a man wanted to amount to anything in this world he must be willing to take risks. He was doing that right now, and even frightened nearly out of his wits he was determined to see things through. Lucius Minley, a slender, soft-spoken man, wore wire-rimmed spectacles whose round lenses accentuated his round cheeks. He’d allowed his short brown hair to grow into bushy sideburns that hid his ears. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he tried to make his position understood. “It’s not me,” he repeated with a glance toward Moses. “My friends, there is nothing I would rather do than extend your note. I would loan you the money from my own pocket if I had it. But as the director of this institution, I am required to exercise certain fiscal responsibility.”

“What the devil is he sayin’, Theotis?” Moses asked. He reached over and began to twirl the wooden globe set in a mahogany brace that dominated the office and was Lucius Minley’s pride and joy.

“He’s using a bunch of fancy words to say he aims to steal our land,” Theotis said, scratching his beard with the Starr’s barrel.

“Please be careful with that,” Lucius said.

Moses gave the globe a brief appraisal. “What is it?”

“A map of the earth. The entire planet. I brought it all the way from New York.” Lucius spoke to the younger Tellico as if he were speaking to a troublesome child, in an attempt to humor the man. “If you like, I can show you where we are, this very minute.”

“I don’t need no map to tell me where I am,” Moses blurted out. “I’m in this here office listening to you trying to steal our land.”

“You borrowed money and used your homestead for collateral. The law is quite clear. If you cannot make payment on your note, the bank has the right to foreclose to protect its depositors.”

“But we paid you. We gave you every damn dollar we got for selling our horses down in Texas!” Moses stated. It was plain to see he considered the matter settled.

Lucius slid the leather case containing several hundred Confederate dollars back across the desk toward the brothers. “This currency is barely worth the paper it’s printed on. The bank cannot accept it. Now, if you’d been paid in gold or Union greenbacks…” The banker shook his head and held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I’m deeply sorry.”

“Looks like we ain’t worth protecting,” Theotis growled. He raised his arm and fired another round into the ceiling. White paint and splintered wood showered down on the men in the office and littered the papers on the president’s desk. Lucius jumped in his seat. He gave another start as Moses drew his own pistol, another Starr, and squeezed off another couple of rounds after Theotis’s two.

“We aim to leave here with a loan, drawn up and officially signed by you, Lucius. Or by Aunt Helen’s mustache, come the next rain your roof will leak like a sieve.”

“Maybe we ought to take our land out of this globe and go on about our business.” Moses holstered his gun and drew a whittling knife from his belt and touched the point to the globe. “Reckon we’re about here.” He dug the tip of the knife into the globe.

“No!”

“That’s enough, Moses. Put the knife away,” Jesse said from the doorway. Behind him, the rest of the bank was empty. No one had yet to follow him inside. There was a natural reluctance to do so. The Tellicos had been drinking—or at least that was the word on the street. Folks had seen them imbibing in the back of their buckboard. Tangling with a drunk Tellico was about as smart as running buck naked into a cactus patch—fast or slow, a man was bound to come out the worse for wear.

Moses glanced around and spied Jesse and blinked in surprise. The last thing the Tellicos had heard, Ben McQueen’s eldest son had ridden off to fight for the Union. “Lookee here, Theotis. Jesse’s come home. Looks like he’s even growed some.”

“You Tellicos have had your fun. Time to clean up and put your toys away,” Jesse said.

“Thank God,” Lucius signed, grateful that providence had sent him a benefactor.

“This don’t concern you, Jesse,” Theotis warned. “Don’t get in the way. I’d lie down in a den of rattlers for your pa, I swear I would, but you get in our way and we’ll put you down.”

“Put the knife away,” Jesse flatly ordered.

“Not till Minley accepts this Confederate money as payment for our note.”

“These graybacks aren’t worth twenty dollars in Union script,” Lucius said. “You might as well offer to pay the note off in flour sacks.”

“Sign the note paid in full,” Theotis warned, indicating the contract on the banker’s desk.

Jesse had heard enough. The interior of the office reeked of burnt gunpowder and home brew. The Tellicos were desperate. Like cougars with their backs to the walls, they were ready to fight to save what was theirs. But Minley no doubt had the law on his side.

“Lucius, it would be a neighborly thing to extend the bank note and allow Moses and Theotis to come up with the money in a proper way.” Jesse moved into the room as he talked. Theotis appeared to be the most dangerous: his gun was drawn. The Starr revolver lacked the balance and precision workmanship of a Colt revolver, but it was still a lethal weapon. The bullet holes in the office ceiling were an excellent example of the revolver’s effectiveness, however clumsy its manufacture. Jesse stopped in front of the window overlooking the alley. Theotis was just to his left in the center of the room. Moses remained by the globe, reluctant to discard his knife. Lucius Minley was seated at his desk. His advancement from clerk to director had occurred during Jesse’s absence, in the year and a half since the war had broken out in earnest. Minley wore his new position of authority like a king his mantle. He refused to be cowed by these unkempt and illiterate Tellico brothers.

“After today’s incident, I wouldn’t give them spit if they were dying of thirst,” Lucius replied.

Theotis turned livid. “Why, you pompous little jaybird. I ain’t gonna shoot you, I’m gonna wring your neck!” He started toward the man behind the desk. Jesse reached out and caught him by the arm. Theotis was not about to be stopped. He swung a haymaker that would have taken Jesse’s head off if it had landed. But Jesse ducked under the blow, then stepped down and crunched his bootheels onto Theotis’s right foot, mashing the big brute’s toes.

“Yeeeoowww!” Theotis howled. “Goddamn it, Jesse, that ain’t fair.”

Jesse batted the gun from the man’s grasp and punched him square in the middle of his face, nearly fracturing his hand while cutting a knuckle on Theotis’s tooth. Theotis Tellico roared like a bear and shook off the effect of Jesse’s blow and charged him, which was precisely what Jesse hoped he’d do. He stepped aside with all the grace of a matador, allowing Theotis to charge past him and through the window directly behind him. In an explosion of glass and shattering wood, Theotis not only carried the entire window along with him but most of the windowframe as well. Moses grabbed up the globe and prepared to hurl it at Jesse, when reinforcements arrived in the person of Parson Marshall T. Alan Booth. Though physically unimposing, there seemed both an aura of “spiritual” as well as “duly-appointed” authority about the man. His hair was smoke gray and as neatly trimmed as his gray beard, cut close to follow the jawline. His complexion was ruddy and vigorous. He had come running at the first sound of trouble, cradling his Colt revolving shotgun in the crook of his arm. As the marshal of Chahta Creek, Booth’s job was to uphold the rule of law and order within the town limits, while as parson of the First Congregationalist Church he saw his responsibilities extending beyond the town limits to the furthest reaches of the human soul.

Parson Marshal Booth wore a black frock coat and light wool black trousers, a black shirt with a white collar, and a short-brimmed hat. A shiny six-pointed star rode the left side of his vest, over his heart. In the left-hand pocket of his coat he carried a Navy Colt .36 with a shortened barrel. The right-hand pocket bulged with the reassuring bulk of a worn, leather-bound Bible. T. Alan Booth rushed the door and fired the shotgun into the air to get the attention of the men in the bank director’s office. The explosion was deafening in the confines of such a small place. The buckshot blew a hole in the ceiling the size of a country ham. Sunlight streamed through and painted a patch of amber on the office floor. Booth seemed as surprised as anyone by the blast. He cocked the weapon and readied another chamber.

“Christ Almighty! Will you people quit shooting holes in my roof!” Lucius exclaimed with a look of dismay and frustration. His office, his beautiful “civilized” office…

“Sorry, Lucius, my thumb slipped,” Booth sheepishly replied. He’d wasted a load, but the shotgun’s cylinder held three more. He looked around at the other two men in the room. “By golly, is that you, Jesse? What are you doing back?” He immediately checked the eldest son of Ben McQueen for missing limbs. No, the lad appeared whole. He fixed the remaining Tellico brother in a steely-eyed glare. “Moses, I warned you and that boneheaded brother of yours to finish your liquor on the trail home. Now hand over your knife and gun.”

Moses meekly lowered his head, blinked his eyes, wavered unsteadily on his feet, then held his knife and Starr revolver for the parson marshal to confiscate.

“They tried to rob the bank, T. Alan. I want them charged with robbery and attempted murder!” Lucius said, at last feeling safe enough to rise from his desk and lean forward on his knuckles until they turned white.

“Murder?” Booth asked.

“See for yourself,” Lucius said, indicating the bullet holes above him.

Booth chuckled. “What the hell were you doing? Hiding on the ceiling?”

“We didn’t try to rob nobody,” Moses growled. “If anyone’s been stole from, it’s me and Theotis. We tried to pay off our note but he won’t accept them Confederate dollars.”

At the mention of Moses’ older brother, the parson marshal checked the room again, searching through the drifting ribbons of powdersmoke for some sign of the other Tellico.

Jesse jabbed a thumb toward the gaping opening in the wall that used to contain a window. All that remained was a length of frame jutting out from the jagged timber siding and half a torn curtain. A low lingering groan floated in from the alley.

Jesse shrugged as Booth looked questioningly at the captain. “I just tried to help,” Jesse said.

“Oh, Lucius. Thank God you’re safe!” Rose Minley burst into the office, her hair in disarray and skirt trailing dust from the street. She unleashed the full force of her fury on Moses, who retreated toward Booth for protection. “You brigand. You disreputable…oh.” Words failed her, and with a sweep of her skirt she joined her husband.

“I’ll take these boys back over to the jail and see they’re duly charged with disorderly conduct and public drunkenness,” said Booth.

“What? They tried to kill me,” Lucius said.

“Oh nonsense, Lucius. If they had wanted to kill you, they most assuredly would have,” Jesse spoke up. The Tellicos had behaved badly but he couldn’t blame them. Lucius Minley certainly wasn’t cutting them any slack. “As for robbing the bank, from the looks of things Moses and Theotis were trying to deposit this money.” He grabbed a fistful of Confederate dollars. “That’s hardly a crime in the banking business.”