Folsom nodded and folded his hands together in front of his waist. “I understand your concern, Sheriff. You are worried that if I attempt to retrieve this girl and must use force, I will be breaking the law.”
“Sounds about right,” Reuben said.
“And you will have to arrest me.”
“I’d probably just shoot you dead,” Reuben said, and the prisoners laughed.
“Of course,” Folsom said. The prisoners continued laughing at him. “All of this would be of grave concern to me as well, if I were you.”
“Well, that’s mighty insightful of you, Officer Folsom,” Reuben said. “I’m glad we got that straightened out.”
Reuben got up to show Folsom the way out, but Folsom raised his hand to stop him. “You are a great man. That much is obvious. And as with all great men, you have much on your mind.”
“That’s true,” Reuben said. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll just—”
“I am sure it is only this cloud of distraction that has made you forget US v. Clapox,” Folsom said.
“The US versus who?” Reuben asked.
“Clapox,” Folsom said.
“I had the clapox once,” Cody Canada said. “Took a whole bottle of mercury pills to get rid of it.”
Both prisoners began laughing again, but Folsom continued. “US v. Clapox gives me the right to conduct investigations pertaining to offenses against tribal people, regardless of where or who.”
Reuben snorted. “Hogwash.”
Folsom looked around the office. He saw the gun rack with both shotguns on it, but there were no other shelves to be found. “Where are your lawbooks?” he asked. “I will show you the section.”
“I don’t—I lent them to someone and they haven’t brought them back yet,” Reuben said.
“Wait here,” Folsom said. He went out to Hates the Rain’s saddlebag and removed the book of 1888 UNITED STATES FEDERAL and MUNICIPAL RULINGS and came back up the steps with it. Reuben was standing in the doorway, watching him. Folsom turned to the bent page and opened the book up. “US v. Clapox. If you want to read it, I will wait.”
Reuben took the book from him and squinted at the pages, trying to make sense of the words written there. He snapped the book shut and said, “This ain’t nothing but confounded jibber jabber written by a bunch of flannel mouths. I’d need a judge to tell me what this means.”
“Very well,” Folsom said. “I will stay if you want to go find a judge.” He cocked his head toward the prisoners and added, “You can leave these men with me.”
“There’s an idea, Sheriff,” Canada said. “Just unlock these cell doors and head on out. I’ve got a feeling this whole situation will take care of itself before you get back.”
“You speak with a wolf’s mouth but a canary’s heart,” Folsom said.
“What you say to me?” Canada spat. “What you say to me, you red son of a bitch?” He thrust his hand through the cell bars and grasped at the air between him and Folsom. “Come here and say that!”
Reuben handed Folsom back the lawbook and pushed him toward the door. “Judge is busy right now. In the meantime, you go on ahead and look around if you want, but I don’t want you causing no trouble for any of the folk who live here. You understand me? You can stay and you can wear that badge and call yourself a lawman if you like, but you will take no official action or interfere with any white folk in any way, form, or fashion, without my express permission. We clear?”
Folsom stepped backward onto the porch. “We are clear. I will find what I need and then bring it to you.”
“Head east and you’ll find some rooms for rent where they aren’t too particular about who stays there,” Reuben said.
Behind him, Cody Canada was hollering he was going to kill Folsom, Folsom’s whole family, all the Indians on his reservation, and any other Indians who looked like him.
“Go lay low for a few days and hopefully these two will be on their way. After that, I’ll see what I can do,” Reuben said.
“Thank you, Sheriff,” Folsom tried to say, but the door was already shut.
* * *
* * *
The tracks in front of the sheriff’s office went in too many different directions to follow. Between the local traffic, the tracks from the group of US Marshals that had ridden there recently, and the Red Priest’s large group who had come afterward, the ground was pulverized beyond any hope of discerning any kind of sign.
The sheriff was lying. That much Folsom knew. The priest and his people had been there. Why the man was lying, or whether or not he was working with the priest, Folsom could not determine. Not yet anyway. There were ways of making a man reveal what he knows. Many ways. All of them worked better when there were fewer people around to interfere, particularly men such as the prisoners being held in the cells inside the sheriff’s office. There was nothing else to do but keep looking, keep listening, and wait.
Folsom turned Hates the Rain to the right and headed east.
* * *
* * *
You’re in honey hook. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
The paint on the sign was cracked and faded. The rest of it was covered in bird droppings. There were broken wagon wheels and empty bottles scattered along the roadside next to it. Folsom kept going.
The first row of buildings were bathhouses, offering competing deals.
one woman, one scrub, one dollar!
The next sign read: hot meal, hot bath, hot ladies, cold beer! four dollars!
The one on the third building made Folsom laugh.
our women may be dirty but our water is clean!
free cigar for every customer!
two dollars!
There were no banks or hotels to be found. Folsom saw several run-down-looking saloons advertising games of chance inside, a Chinese laundry, and a store called We Buy. The sign in the window said we buy: guns, horses, saddles, jewelry, boots, and more! top dollar!
Other buildings placed between those shops had no markings but seemed to be fuller than the rest. People staggered out of them, unable to walk correctly. They’d stumble a few paces and become entranced with the sight of their own hands or point at someone riding past on horseback and gasp in amazement. Clouds of sickly-sweet opium smoke poured into the street near those buildings, and Folsom covered his mouth and nose with his hand and tried not to breathe it in.
The alleyways between the buildings were even more crowded. Women dressed in filthy clothing waved for Folsom to come to them. Their faces and arms were covered in sores. Men walked past Hates the Rain flailing their fists at nothing and screaming incoherently.
The streets were filled with noise. People fighting, yelling, getting sick. Buried in the cacophony, he heard someone shout, “Get that Indian son of a bitch!”
Folsom leapt from his saddle before the sentence was finished. His left hand was curled in a fist and his right hand was down over the handle of his pistol. He searched for signs of an attacker but saw no one behind him or coming to attack him from the side. He looked up at the windows of the buildings surrounding him, searching for bushwhackers. They were empty as well.
Just a coward then, Folsom thought. Someone trying to get a rise out of me who was afraid to be seen. He fitted his left boot through the stirrup and went to pull himself back up into the saddle when he heard, “Hold him still, goddamn it!”
He headed across the street, where people were crowded at the mouth of the alleyway to watch whatever was happening inside it. “I told you don’t come back here no more, you stinking red bastard!” someone shouted.
Punches were being thrown. Heavy fists were landing on human flesh and the person being struck cried out under the force of them.
“Excuse me,” Folsom said to the people blocking his way. No one moved. “Make room!” Folsom shouted, and pushed his way
past them.
Three white men dressed in little more than filthy rags were standing over a white-haired man lying crumpled on the ground. They had him surrounded. It was all the man could do to cover his head with his arms as they leaned down to pummel him with their fists. The largest one in the middle swung back his leg and kicked the man in the side, snarling, “No Indians! You hear me?”
“I hear you,” Folsom said.
The white men spun around in surprise. Their eyes focused on the badge on Folsom’s vest and the gun and knife on his belt. The two smaller men backed away, but their leader hitched up his pants and sniffed contemptuously. “You supposed to be a lawman or something?”
Folsom kept walking toward them. “That’s right.”
“Indian lawmen don’t come into white territory.”
“I do,” Folsom said.
“Yeah?” the man said. He glanced back at his two friends. They were nervous, but neither of them had run off yet. “Well, your kind don’t belong here,” he continued. “So why don’t you take this trash with you and go back to the reservation?”
The man on the ground groaned and clutched his stomach as he tried to get up. When he pushed himself up from the ground, Folsom saw his face for the first time. It was deeply lined and dark from drink and age and hard living. He leaned back against the wall behind him and tried to catch his breath, then turned his head to see who had come to his aid. His black eyes widened in surprise.
“Istaqa?” Folsom whispered.
The older man coughed and groaned in pain. “No,” he whimpered. “Not you.”
Folsom’s heart broke at the injury in his voice. He touched his chest. “Istaqa, it is me.”
“No,” Istaqa moaned. He shook his head and clenched his eyes shut. “Not yet, Siisiiyei. Not like this. Not here.”
“Shut up!” the gang leader shouted. He raised his fist to strike and Folsom leapt forward and caught him by the wrist. The man looked in disbelief at his own wrist, being gripped by an Indian’s fingers. He twisted it to try to get away but Folsom held him firm.
The man tried swinging his other fist at Folsom’s head, but Folsom slipped beneath it easily and drove the palm of his hand straight into the small ledge of flesh between the bottom of the man’s nose and the top of his upper lip.
At first, the man stood perfectly still, staring at Folsom in confusion. The blow to his face had been so hard and so fast that he’d felt it before he’d seen it. He still did not completely understand, even as he reached up to touch his face with the tips of his fingers and two rivers of blood gushed from his nostrils. Blood streamed across his hand, hot and sticky, and he looked down at it in wonder.
The other two saw blood coming out of their friend’s face and charged.
Folsom caught the first with a kick to the leg just as the man had all of his weight balanced on it. The heel of Folsom’s boot caught him just inside the knee and made a loud pop! that echoed from the alley’s brick walls. The man toppled forward. Folsom stepped aside and struck him above his right ear as he went past, sending him face-first to the ground.
The last of them grabbed Folsom’s left arm and tried to wrench him down. Instead, Folsom circled in front of him and crouched low, then sprang upward with his elbow aimed at the man’s lower jaw. The man’s teeth clapped together violently and he staggered backward, his face turned up toward the sky. He tripped over the fallen form of his friend and landed hard on his back.
The only one left standing was the one clutching his bleeding nose. The man who’d shouted the word “Indian” like it was something filthy. The man who’d kicked Istaqa while he lay defenseless on the ground. Folsom drew his knife.
The man had his hand clamped over his face to try to stop the bleeding, but blood continued to stream between his fingers. He raised his other hand and said, “No! Please! We didn’t mean nothing by it! We’re just drunk!”
Folsom took a step toward him, holding the knife aloft.
The man backed away. “We’ll never bother him again,” he said, “or any other of you people, I swear it. Don’t take my scalp!”
Folsom raised the knife and held it level with the man’s face. The man put both his hands on top of his head to protect it and screamed.
“Run from this place and do not come back,” Folsom said.
The man spun and took off running down the alleyway and disappeared, his screams continuing long after. Folsom sheathed his knife.
The other two attackers were groaning as they tried to get up and see to their injuries. They were the only ones remaining in the alley. Istaqa was gone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Elliot Reuben Jr. flagged down a local boy and sent him to the nearest butcher to ask for whatever meat could be spared for a hardworking sheriff and two important prisoners. The boy returned with three cuts of beef that were hardly beef at all. They were mostly large chunks of fat with gristle running through their center. It didn’t matter.
Reuben started up the wood stove and laid the steaks down on the floor in their butcher’s paper wrapping. One by one he stuck a knife into each cut, and one by one he put them in the stove over the flames until the fat started to bubble and drip.
They might not have been much to look at, but cooking them filled the jail with the aroma of roasted meat, and by the time he was done cooking, all their taste buds were working so hard in anticipation that their jaws cramped.
Reuben laid each piece of beef back down on the butcher’s paper and picked out the thickest cut for himself. He carried it over to his desk and set it down. Cody Canada and Blackjack McGinty eyed his steak hungrily.
“Picked the best one for yourself, did you?” Canada asked.
“Give me that one, on the right, Sheriff,” McGinty said.
“That’s the one I want, you tall son of a bitch,” Canada said.
Reuben ignored them as he picked up the piece nearest McGinty and handed it to him, then did the same for Canada.
“No fork or knife, Sheriff?” Canada asked.
“Just eat it off the paper,” Reuben said. “That’s what I’m gonna do.”
He sat at his desk and picked up his piece of steak with both hands and bit into it. It was tough. He had to tear off a large clump of fat with his teeth and chew it for a full minute before he could swallow it. It was greasy as hell and he didn’t mind it at all.
Blackjack McGinty stood leaning against the cell bars chewing on his piece of meat. As he chewed, he tilted his head toward Reuben and said, “Have you seen that Indian girl that lawman was in here asking about? Was she in that preacher’s bunch riding one of the horses?”
“I don’t think so,” Reuben said.
“I saw a few women through the window. They all had their hair cut short like the men,” McGinty said. “I wouldn’t have been able to tell if one of them was an Indian or not. Could you?”
“I didn’t see no Indian girl,” Reuben said.
“That’s good,” McGinty said. “Especially if she was an Apache.”
“That’s true,” Canada agreed. “Wouldn’t want her to be no Apache, that’s for damn sure.”
“How would anyone be able to tell?” Reuben asked.
“You wouldn’t,” McGinty said. “Especially not if she’d cut off all her hair and was wearing one of them robes like the others. Believe me. Last thing you need is a kidnapped Apache girl.”
Reuben laughed. “I don’t think we have to worry about any Apache now. We whooped them pretty good.”
“Didn’t we though?” McGinty asked.
“We sure did, Sheriff.” Cody Canada laughed and took another bite of his steak.
“How many of them Apaches you think are left after we got done whooping them?” McGinty asked.
“I don’t have no idea,” Reuben said.
“Hundreds?” McGinty asked.
“Can
’t be that low. Has to be more than that. I read about a whole heap of Apache got rounded up and taken to the reservations not too long ago,” Reuben said.
“You think there might be what? A few thousand left?”
“Maybe.”
“Ten thousand?” McGinty asked.
“It could be, I don’t know,” Reuben said. “Let’s say ten thousand.”
“So, not just in the reservations, but scattered all across the country, whether it’s still living in tepees out there in the wilderness or hiding in caves, or even down there fighting the Mexicans. We’ll say around ten thousand.”
“Sure,” Reuben said.
“All right.” McGinty took another bite of his steak and bit into it. Juice ran down the side of his mouth and he wiped it with his sleeve. “I’m just talking able bodies now. Not the sick or the old or the ones missing a leg or something. Also, leave off the women and children. I’m just talking about capable fighters. How many you think that brings us to, Cody?”
Canada swallowed and said, “Couple thousand, give or take.”
“Give or take,” McGinty said. “Couple thousand fighters, scattered all over the place?”
“Sure,” Reuben said. “God knows where they’re all holed up.”
“Well, we know there’s a lot of them in Oklahoma,” Canada said.
“That’s true,” McGinty said. “Like the man said, government rounded up as many of them Apache as they could find and stuck them all right down there in little old Oklahoma.”
“Where’d that Indian Police officer say he came from?” Canada asked. “I forget.”
McGinty looked at Sheriff Reuben and waited for him to answer.
“Oklahoma,” Reuben said.
“That’s right,” McGinty said. “He didn’t look like he’d been out on the road too much neither. Shoot, he probably made it here from Oklahoma in what—a few days?” He put the last piece of beef into his mouth and crumpled up the paper. “Now, I have to say, if our count is right, and there ain’t but a few thousand able-bodied fighting Apache Indians left, it don’t sound like much.”
Hell Snake Page 10