Winding Stair (9781101559239) (17 page)

“You're damned right,” Schiller said. “And that Creek whiskey peddler the girl said come through their farm, interested in the racehorse. All the same man. You're damned right.”

At the thought of Jennie Thrasher, my throat tightened and I said nothing more. Oscar Schiller must have sensed my feeling because he turned away from me and looked at Nason Grube chained to the roof post. When he spoke, it was almost to himself.

“And that poor dumb bastard is a good bet for the nigger that kid told us about.”

Nason Grube sat there, still, his arms pulled taut against the restraining handcuffs, looking into his garden. Moma July rolled a cigarette, lit it, and put it between the black man's slack lips. At first, Grube let it hang there, and then, seeming to realize what it was, began to puff furiously, his eyes squinted against the smoke.

“He doesn't look much like a murderer now,” I said.

“No, but he'd look a lot different with a belly full of whiskey. Before we get to Cornkiller, let me see that gun of his.”

The cartridge belt was still slung across my shoulder and Oscar Schiller slipped out the small revolver. He swore softly.

“Hell's fire, this thing is a popgun,” he said. “A Colt .32 double. Most of those wounds we saw at Thrasher's were bigger stuff.”

“If he was there, it doesn't much matter who pulled the trigger,” I said.

“Well, you're the lawyer,” Schiller said as we turned into the house.

When we reappeared, Skitty Cornkiller leaped up awkwardly, one hand fastened to the bed frame. He began to yell that he hadn't done anything and he wanted to know who the hell we thought we were coming on his farm waving guns around. Schiller moved in close to him and with a sudden, vicious jab, his fingers extended, he caught the young Creek just under the ribs. I could hear the breath explode out of Cornkiller's lungs and he fell back onto the bed, doubled over, his short hair bristling out from the top of his head like spines on a chestnut burr.

Schiller drew up a chair close to the bed, and when Garret came in he was on the other side, pressing in, too, as though they were squeezing the young Creek between them. After a few moments, Cornkiller began to straighten and I could see a flicker of cold light deep in his eyes. He glared at Schiller and bared his teeth.

“Goddamn, mister, why'd you do that?”

“I want you to understand what serious trouble you're in, Skitty.”

“I ain't in no trouble. I ain't sold any whiskey for a long spell. They ain't a drop on the place. Goddamn, you ain't got no call doin' all this pushin' and shovin'. I ain't done nothin'.”

“You sell whiskey all over The Nations, and everybody knows it,” Garret said. “You've been fined once and spent time in Fort Smith Jail once for it. Don't try to horseshit us, Skitty.”

“I ain't sold a drop since you caught me last time, Garret.”

“You were in the Choctaw Nation less than a month ago, with a mule loaded with whiskey,” Schiller said. Cornkiller's head jerked back and forth as each marshal shot his questions. “We know all about it.”

“Goddamn, mister, I ain't been in no Choctaw Nation.”

“You were in there with a man named Johnny Boins,” Schiller said. There was that quick light in the depths of Cornkiller's eyes, quickly shut off.

“I don't know nobody by that name.”

“You're a big bettin' man, Skitty,” Garret said, bending close to him. “You ever see a racer called Tar Baby?”

“I never heard of him.”

“I didn't say the horse was a stallion. How'd you know that horse ain't a mare?”

“I never said he wasn't.”

“You said
him
! You said you never heard of
him
!”

Cornkiller lowered his head. “I never heard of him.”

Schiller reached over and, with the cup of his hand under the young Creek's chin, lifted his face. The eyes were defiant.

“We like looking at men we talk to,” Schiller said. “Now, Skitty, you were in Choctaw Nation with a man named Milk Eye Rufus Deer, not long ago, wasn't you?” Again that instant flash of light in his eyes.

“I never heard of no such man.”

“I said don't horseshit us,” Garret snapped. “Everybody in Creek Nation has heard of Milk Eye.”

“Goddamn, Garret, I heard of him. But I never knowed him and I never been no place with him, not in Choctaw Nation nor no place else.”

“Yes, you were,” Schiller said. “You killed a Choctaw woman down there, after you raped her.”

“I never done no such a thing,” Cornkiller yelled, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were like an animal's, caught in a steel trap. Close to his face, Schiller's glasses gleamed malevolently.

“You killed a Choctaw woman, and then you killed a man named Thrasher and his two hired hands, and then you raped his wife. And you killed her, too.”

“I never, either,” Cornkiller screamed, pulling against the cuffs on his wrist.

“You killed the first one; then you killed Mrs. Thrasher, too,” Schiller roared and he leaped up, kicking back the chair. Suddenly the nickel-plated revolver was out, the muzzle pressed hard into Cornkiller's throat. The young Creek gagged, trying to pull back as Schiller pushed the gun muzzle into his neck. “I ought to blow your goddamned lying throat out right here.”

Cornkiller's eyes bugged and he choked as Schiller rolled back the hammer to full cock. For an instant, I was sure he was going to kill the Indian.

“Nobody killed that Thrasher woman. She got loose . . .” He stopped, still gagging. The realization of what he'd said spread across his face like a blush. For a moment only, Schiller kept the pressure on Cornkiller's throat, and then as suddenly as it had appeared, the big pistol was back beneath the marshal's duck jacket. Skitty Cornkiller sat there, tears running down his cheeks, coughing, his eyes rolling.

“Oh goddamn, mister, that hurt me,” he sobbed. “You really hurt me, mister. Oh goddamn, goddamn.”

If he knew what he was saying, the significance of it was obvious to us all. We had been waiting for the Choctaw police to report that they'd found the woman's body, but apparently she was alive, still in hiding, afraid to come out. If she could be found to bear witness . . .

“All right, Skitty,” Schiller said softly, almost gently. “That's about all for now. Except you might tell us who did kill those people, if you didn't.”

Cornkiller spoke without lifting his head.

“I don't know nothin' about it. I don't know nothin' about no killin'. I ain't gone talk to you no more, mister. Goddamn you.”

“Well, it don't matter. Eben, you got another one of those warrants?”

I handed him a John Doe. Schiller slapped it on the bed beside the young Creek.

“Can you read, Skitty?” Cornkiller shook his head. “I'll read it all to you, then. We don't want you to make any mistake about this. You're arrested for rape and murder in the Choctaw Nation.”

“We'll just take you down and turn you over to the Choctaw police,” Garret said.

Skitty Cornkiller's head snapped back up and he looked wildly at the two men before him.

“Goddamn, Garret, you can't turn me over to no Indian police. You gotta take me to Fort Smith. That Thrasher was white . . . .” He knew as he said it that he'd made a second mistake.

“You don't like them Indian courts too much, do you?” Garret said. “They'll convict your ass in a hurry and tie you to a tree and shoot you to death, won't they?”

Schiller bent over him, still speaking softly. “Skitty, how'd you know he was white?”

“Well, goddamn,” Cornkiller stammered. “Well, goddamn. It's in all the newspapers.”

“You just said you can't read.”

“Well, goddamn. Somebody told me about it.”

“You're under arrest, Skitty. But we aren't taking you to the Choctaw lighthorse. We're taking you to Fort Smith.” Schiller read him the warrant. The whole episode left a hard metallic taste in my mouth. But I was confident Skitty Cornkiller was one of the Winding Stair bunch. I wasn't so sure about the black man.

In the barn, we found more evidence. There was a mule and a broken-down mare with the hair worn off her gaskins from trace chains. She had been as badly used as the rest of this farm. But there were two other horses, both good stock and showing signs of having been well kept. One was a bay gelding, the other a blue roan stallion, strong but past his time for prime breeding. The bay had a
T
brand on one flank.

“I'd say this is a Thrasher horse,” Oscar Schiller said, running his hand along the withers of the bay. “He ain't Tar Baby, though, sure as hell. That roan, he looks like he might be called Ole Blue. Better take these two to Fort Smith. You might find somebody to recognize 'em, along with Skitty Cornkiller.”

He was thinking of the black boy Emmitt, but he was thinking of Jennie Thrasher as well, and I saw the trace of a smile on his thin lips. I felt my anger rising, choking my words.

“What has to be done is pretty obvious, Marshal.”

“Turn these other two nags out. From the looks of it, open-range graze will be better than anything they've had here.”

“They'll sure as hell eat Grube's garden,” I said. “Why don't you take them in and sell them?”

His cold eyes turned on me for a moment, but then the smile was back, only a twitch but undeniable.

“There's no market for stock like this, or I would,” he said. “And for Grube's garden, he's not going to be needing it anyway.”

We shackled our prisoners together and sat them on the floor in the room where Joe Mountain worked over the cookstove, making breakfast. The two men were subdued now, almost resigned, and they told the Osage where he could find salt pork and flour for gravy. We gave them coffee while we waited for the food and twice Moma July rolled a cigarette for the black, though he refused to do so for Skitty Cornkiller.

There obviously existed a strange bond between our two men. It was as though the younger was father to the older. Like a child, Grube constantly watched Skitty Cornkiller's face as if trying to catch some unspoken thought, waiting for the opportunity to support or encourage the young Creek. And the Indian treated Nason Grube as he might a young girl, his expression guarded, his manner gentle. They spoke infrequently to each other, and then in Creek so that only Moma July and Garret understood what passed. I found it somehow typical of this place that an old uneducated black man had learned in his years in The Nations how to converse in another tongue. A number of times, they looked at each other silently. It was like a hunter and his well-trained dog looking at each other, the one with fondness, the other awaiting command.

Neither of the marshals asked further questions of the two. Burris Garret sat in a chair tilted against one wall, watching the Osage scrambling eggs. Oscar Schiller had gone into the bedroom and sat there with the palmetto off, writing notes in his little book, his hair hanging damply across his forehead.

The prisoners ate awkwardly, their hands still cuffed. The rest of us made fast work of the greasy meal, Schiller insisting on moving out of there quickly.

 

 

When our little cavalcade reached the railroad tracks, Schiller pulled up and sat thinking, chewing on his matchstick for a long time before he spoke, staring out across the rolling country of the Canadian River bottoms, lush and green under the July sun. He was trying to make some kind of decision, I knew, and a great part of it was whether he would tell us what he planned. Finally, he motioned the black marshal and me away from the others, leaving Joe Mountain and Moma July with the prisoners.

“I been thinking ever since Cornkiller said that woman in Choctaw Nation had got loose,” he said, and I knew he was speaking about Mrs. Thrasher. “If that's true, we ought to find her.”

He turned squarely toward me, twisting in his saddle, his eyes cold.

“Eben. You're the lawyer on this chase. What's our chances for a conviction on the Thrasher killings with what we got now?”

“Not a strong case,” I said, and because he was now including me in his thinking, my resentment once more began to disappear. “We can put them on Hatchet Hill Road with that boy's testimony. But all we've got to put them at the Thrasher farm is that we tracked them there. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . Cornkiller can be identified as the whiskey runner out scouting for the racehorse. We've got what appears to be a Thrasher animal, and we've got the button hat, but both could have been bought from somebody else. And that note Johnny Boins forgot to burn, that doesn't prove much either. And the whore's story would be shaky.”

Oscar Schiller grunted and looked off across the countryside again, nodding his head just enough to make the wide brim of the palmetto quiver.

“That's how I figured it,” he said. “I've seen Parker juries convict on less, but I'd like to be sure, dead sure. We could hang'em all on the Hatchet Hill thing, but that depends on whether we ever get that kid to telling his tale on a witness stand.”

“Why wouldn't he?”

Burris Garret laughed.

“I want these people on the Thrasher thing,” Schiller said. “If Cornkiller was right, and that woman is still alive, maybe she saw enough to put the whole lot of them at the scene. When the killings were done.”

He spat the chewed matchstick off to one side and turned to me again.

“Now we've got a couple more of these bastards, the woman ought not be afraid to show herself.”