Tilghman gurgled a curse as the blood rose in his throat, then dribbled from the corners of his mouth. He fell backwards, landing in a freshly deposited pile of horse apples. His arms flopped out to either side of him, the unfired gun dangling from a crooked, but stilled finger. It had all happened so quickly that the first indication to any of the citizens of the town that something was happening was the boom of John Henry’s gun.
John Henry stood there for a long moment, the gun still in his hand, smoke curling up from the end of the barrel.
Two weeks later, John Henry was standing in Captain Charles LeFlores’s office as twenty-one-hundred dollars, all that remained of the stolen money, was counted out to him.
“I’m sorry that this is all there is left,” Captain LeFlores said.
“It’s better than a total loss.”
“I guess so. So, what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. Get a seed bull and some heifers and start over, I guess.” John Henry took off his badge and held it out toward Captain LeFlores. “I thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this, legally.”
LeFlores didn’t take the proffered badge.
“You don’t need to give that back to me. You could stay on with the police.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“I can’t answer that. Only you know why you might want to do something. But I can tell you why I want you to stay. I think you would make a fine police officer, John Henry. Probably the finest on the force. And Lord knows we could use you. What about it? Would you consider becoming a full-time policeman?”
“I don’t know.”
“I tell you what. Today is Friday, take the weekend to think about it. I have an opening, and it’s yours if you want it. But let me know by Monday, would you?”
“All right,” John Henry said. Again, he held out the badge, and again LeFlores refused it.
“Keep it over the weekend. As of now you are still a member of the Indian Police. If you don’t want to remain a member, you can resign on Monday.”
John Henry sat by the dying campfire staring out over the flickering light into the shadows beyond. He had been riding alone all day, thinking of the offer made to him by Captain LeFlores, and now that day had come to a close. Darkness was gathering about him, and the silence of the night was ideal for such contemplation. A soft breeze fanned the glowing embers, lifting sparks, white ashes, and a thin column of smoke to curl upward into the darkness.
Behind John Henry, Iron Heart whickered, and shifted his stance.
“Am I being too quiet for you, Iron Heart? Well, I need the quiet. I have a lot of thinking to do.”
The choices were clear-cut. Either he turned down Captain LeFlores’s offer and made a go of the ranch, which would be a more difficult task now that he was alone, or take LeFlores up on the offer and, for all intent and purposes, be a wanderer.
Oddly, it was the latter thought which most appealed to him. Ever since he came back from the war, he had felt a sense of impermanence. He had stayed with the ranch out of a sense of obligation to his father. But with his father gone, he no longer felt that sense of obligation. He knew that his mother was here only because she had come here with his father, but John Henry also knew that the ranch meant nothing to his mother except for her connection to it through the man she loved. She liked the house, but John Henry could make enough money as a policeman to keep her in her house, and to see to her needs.
A trapped gas bubble in one of the logs was ignited by the flames making a loud pop and emitting a little shower of sparks. The glowing red sparks drifted up on a column of heated air until they joined the stars, red and white pinpoints of light in the black vault of darkness. John Henry stretched out beside the fire to sleep on his question. He was sure he would have the answer by the time he awoke in the morning.
“I am glad you have decided to join us,” Captain LeFlores said when John Henry told him of his decision. “But I never doubted that you would.”
“How is it that you were sure, when I wasn’t?” John Henry asked.
“I know this business,” Captain LeFlores said. “And if ever there was a man born to be a law officer, it was you. As our grandfathers used to say, John Henry, our people will be singing praises and telling stories of your exploits for many years to come.”
Chapter Four
From the Cherokee Advocate:
John Henry Sixkiller Subdues the Vann Gang
It has only been three years since John Henry Sixkiller became a member of the Cherokee Indian Police, but in that three years he has made a record of service so sterling that even newspapers in the States have extolled his virtues.
Sixkiller’s most recent accomplishment is worthy of more accolades than can be heaped upon him by this newspaper, though we will try, in all sincerity, to do just that. And nothing would accomplish this task better than to present you, the reader, with an account of his most recent experiment.
On the month previous, Arnold Vann, Jacob Proxmire, Sylvester Malone, and Kerry Leach robbed a store in Tahlequah. Taking two hundred dollars from the hard-working store owner, and shooting down and killing two of the store clerks, the Vann gang made good their getaway.
One might have thought that the robbers were so successful in their operation that they would never be caught, but they did not figure on the resourcefulness or bravery of John Henry Sixkiller. Captain Sixkiller located the outlaw gang and engaged them, with the result that three of the outlaws were killed and one, Arnold Vann, was brought to justice.
Captain Sixkiller has been rewarded for his service by being appointed chief sheriff of the Cherokee Nation. He has won the respect and admiration of all law-abiding people of the nation, Cherokee and White alike.
Willie Buck was sitting in the outhouse as he read the story about John Henry Sixkiller. When he finished the story, he tore the page from the newspaper and used it.
“This is what I think of you, John Henry Sixkiller,” he said, chuckling as he thought about how he was using the newspaper.
Like John Henry Sixkiller, Willie Buck had gone to war, but unlike John Henry Sixkiller, Willie Buck had joined the Union Army. He took part in only one battle, then deserted soon after, and managed to find his way back into Indian Territory. Once back in Indian Territory, he formed a group of raiders who called themselves the Indian Independence Council and, declaring war against both the North and the South, managed to profit by pillaging Yankee towns in Kansas, and Rebel towns in Arkansas. By war’s end, Willie Buck had enough money to go into business, smuggling liquor into The Nations.
He had a few run-ins with the Indian Police, including one with John Henry, who caught him with an entire wagon load of liquor. John Henry confiscated the wagon, brought Willie Buck into Tahlequah, where he was fined one hundred dollars, and his liquor, worth over five hundred dollars, was destroyed. The enmity between the two that had started when they were but boys was greatly intensified with that action.
Shortly after John Henry was appointed Chief of the Cherokee Indian Police, events were occurring in Washington, D.C., that would have a profound impact on his life. It was an act granting five sections per mile for the construction of a railroad to the southern border of Kansas. Additionally, the act read that construction was authorized “from the southern boundary of Kansas, south through the Indian Territory, with the consent of the Indians, and not otherwise, along the Valley of the Grand and Arkansas Rivers.”
Judge Levi Parsons of New York, the chief executive of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway, chose as his general manager and field commander for the KATY, as the railroad was called, Colonel Robert Stevens. Stevens chose Otis Gunn as his chief engineer. He wanted a very special man to be his chief of construction, and he had been told that John Scullin was such a man. He went to St. Louis to meet with Scullin.
It was early morning, and Stevens was standing at the window of the hotel, looking down upon the Mississippi River. There were at least two dozen boats
docked along the cobblestone bank, consisting of side paddlers, stern-wheelers, and even a couple of screw-propelled boats. Most were freight-carrying boats and goods were being off-loaded from some and loaded onto others. At least one of the docked vessels was a passenger-carrying boat, and people were going aboard for their journey. There were two more boats out in the river, one fighting the strong, downriver current to make a landing, the other taking advantage of the five-mile-per-hour current to move rapidly downstream, headed for Cape Girardeau, New Madrid, Memphis, Vicksburg and, eventually, New Orleans.
Stevens envied those who were in the riverboat business. Their right of way was already laid out for them, the wide, navigable Mississippi River. All they needed was a boat to put in the water. Stevens wanted to do the same thing with trains, establish a network of freight and passenger service that moved as efficiently across land as the boats did on the rivers. But in order to do that, he not only had to purchase the rolling equipment, but track also had to be laid. It was that, the laying of the track, that had brought him to this hotel in St. Louis.
Stevens met John Scullin at the Landing Restaurant for breakfast. Scullin was a big man, at least six feet, three inches tall, with red hair and beard, and weighing, Stevens guessed, about two hundred and forty pounds.
Scullin had come highly recommended to Stevens. “Nobody in the West,” Stevens was told, “can handle the wild, rollicking Irishmen who make up the railroad construction crews like John Scullin.”
“You would be Mr. Scullin?” Stevens asked.
“Aye, m’ bucko, and were you told to look for the biggest and ugliest son of a bitch in the room?”
Stevens laughed. “Something like that,” he said.
“Tell me about the railroad you are building, laddie.”
“If we succeed, the rewards will be enormous. First, we will have access through Indian Territory to Texas and on to the Rio Grande. In addition, we will be given title to more than three million acres of some of the finest farming and ranching land in the entire country. And, as an officer of the railroad, you stand to profit handsomely for any success we may have. And that, of course, depends upon how our construction goes.”
“If ’tis only a matter of concern about the construction, you need not concern yourself, Colonel. Sure ’n’ the construction will be done.”
“There is a one more thing that you should know.”
“And what would that be?”
“We are in a race.”
“A race?”
“Yes. A one-hundred-mile race to the border against James Joy and his boys. Whoever reaches the border first will be given the right to take their tracks across Indian Territory.”
“I see,” Scullin said. He split open a biscuit and covered it with butter and jam before taking a bite.
“And what you are sayin’ m’ bucko, is that, to the victor goes the spoils.” He spoke the words even as he was chewing his food.
“Yes. That is exactly what I’m saying.”
“But the spoils, sure ’n’ they’re well worth running the race for,” Scullin said.
“Oh, indeed they are, Mr. Scullin. So, are you in?”
“Aye, Colonel,” Scullin replied. “I’m in.”
“Do you think you can keep the graders out of the way of the track layers? And do you think you can lay a mile of track a day?”
“’Tis a mile a day you are wanting, is it? Sure, m’ bucko, I’ll give you that and more.”
“I’ll have the contract drawn up for you,” Stevens said.
“A contract is good,” Scullin said. “But I like to take the measure of any deal by a handshake.” He reached across the table, his big hand open. “Would you be for shakin’ my hand, Colonel?”
“Aye, Mr. Scullin,” Stevens said, smiling as he adapted Scullin’s Irish brogue. “’Twould give me great pleasure to shake your hand.”
As the meeting between Colonel Robert Stevens and John Scullin was taking place in St. Louis, three hundred fifty miles to the southwest, in the small settlement of Spavina, Indian Territory, Emil Walks Fast, Edward Lean Bear, and Damon Straight Arrow were just coming into town. Though the permanent population of Spavina was small, it was a busy trading center for this part of the Cherokee Nation and this morning half-a-dozen wagons were parked along the streets. The board sidewalks were full of men and women, Indian and white, looking in the windows of the shops as they hurried to and fro.
“There’s the bank over there,” Walks Fast pointed out. The bank was a rather flimsy-looking building, thrown together with mismatched boards and leaning so that it looked as if a good stiff wind would knock it over.
“It doesn’t look like much of a bank,” Lean Bear said.
“What do we care what it looks like on the outside? It is what is inside the bank that counts. Come. Let’s take the money and get out of here,” Straight Arrow suggested.
“Not so fast,” Walks Fast said, holding up his hand. “First, we need to scout out the town. Straight Arrow, you go up that side of the street and take a look around. Lean Bear, you do the same thing on this side.”
The two men rode slowly down the entire length of the town, then they turned their horses and rode back.
“What does it look like?” Walks Fast asked.
“I didn’t see anyone that might cause us a problem,” Straight Arrow said.
“I didn’t either,” Lean Bear said. “It looks clear to me.”
“All is ready,” Walks Fast said. “Lean Bear, you come with me. Straight Arrow, you stay outside and hold the horses.”
Walks Fast and Lean Bear swung down from their horses and handed the reins over to Straight Arrow, who stayed mounted. He held the reins of all three horses with his left hand, while in his right he held his pistol, though he kept it low and out of sight.
When Walks Fast and Lean Bear stepped inside the bank, they saw a woman and a little girl sitting across the desk from a bank officer. There was one bank teller behind the cage, but he didn’t even look up as the two men entered.
Walks Fast and Lean Bear pulled their pistols.
“This is a holdup!” Walks Fast shouted. “You, teller, empty out your bank drawer and put all the money in a bag!”
Nervously, the bank teller began to comply, emptying his drawer in just a few seconds.
“What are you trying to pull? There isn’t much money here,” Walks Fast said as he looked at the money given him by the teller.
“That’s all there is,” the teller insisted.
“I don’t believe you! You are lying!”
“I swear to you, I am telling the truth!”
Walks Fast looked toward the desk where the bank officer, the woman, and the little girl were all reacting in fear to the situation.
“You!” Walks Fast called to the bank officer. “I know there is more money than this in the bank. Open your vault!”
“I’m just a loan officer. I don’t have the combination to the vault,” the man replied.
“You’re lying!” Walks Fast said. He pointed his pistol at the bank officer. “Open that vault!”
“Help!” the bank officer shouted, starting toward the door. “Help! The bank is being robbed!”
Walks Fast and Lean Bear both started shooting at the fleeing bank officer.
The little girl went down and her mother screamed.
Thinking the robbers were distracted, the bank teller pulled a gun from the shelf below the teller’s window and fired. His bullet hit Lean Bear, but before he could fire a second time, Walks Fast whirled around and shot the teller.
Clutching the sack of money in his hand, Walks Fast ran through the front door.
“Let’s get out of here!” he shouted as he got mounted.
“What was all the shooting? Where is Lean Bear?” Straight Arrow called back.
“Lean Bear is dead.”
“But I have his horse!”
“Leave it!”
By now the townspeople had heard the shots and realized w
hat was going on.
“The bank!” someone shouted. “They’re robbing the bank!”
Walks Fast slapped his legs against the side of his horse and the horse bolted ahead. Straight Arrow dropped the reins to Lean Bear’s horse and followed him
One of the townspeople had armed himself, and he ran out into the street, shooting wildly. Walks Fast returned fire, and the man fell back, bleeding from a chest wound. The rest of the townspeople began screaming and running for cover.
Across the street someone came running from a hardware store carrying a rifle. He fired at the two robbers, missing them, but hitting Straight Arrow’s horse. Straight Arrow leaped from the back of his animal as it went down. There were several horses tied to hitching rails, reacting nervously to all the shouting and shooting. Straight Arrow ran to the nearest one and swung into the saddle.
“Hey! That is my horse!” someone shouted, coming out of the apothecary. Straight Arrow shot at him, driving him back inside.
The local Indian policeman, an older man, was just now reaching the scene, having run the entire length of the street from the police office. He was carrying a rifle and he raised it to his shoulders. But before he could pull the trigger, Walks Fast shot the policeman, who fell with a red, bleeding hole in his forehead.
The two men galloped toward the end of town, where they saw several armed men coming toward them, already shooting. Realizing they couldn’t go that way, Walks Fast and Straight Arrow turned off the street, then galloped through a schoolyard. The children screamed as the two bank robbers galloped through the playground. The schoolteacher ran to push a little girl out of the way. She saved the little girl, but Straight Arrow ran her down and she lay, unmoving, on the ground behind them as they galloped away.
By the time the townspeople regrouped and mounted, Walks Fast and Straight Arrow were two miles out of town. With the police officer dead and no one to lead them, the pursuit quickly fizzled out. The would-be posse turned to the gruesome business of tending to their dead: three men, one little girl, and the schoolteacher. There was a fourth dead man, but that was one of the bank robbers and he was buried within the hour, without benefit of a coffin.
Sixkiller, U.S. Marshal Page 3