Chapter Five
John Henry and Sasha Quiet Stream halted beside the lake, among windblown willows. The moon reflected back a huge silver orb from the surface of the water. John Henry dismounted, then helped Sasha down. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, though Sasha certainly needed no help in dismounting.
“The horses need water,” John Henry said as he led both of them to the edge of the lake.
The night was warm, and as Sasha stood there, looking out at the splash of silver the moon spilt on the surface of the water, she recalled some time from her youth, when she would go into an inviting stream. It seemed so appealing now, offering the promise of cooling her heated body.
Sasha looked over toward John Henry and saw that he was standing next to the horses, watching them drink. Smiling as she yielded to the appeal offered by the lake, she walked down to the edge, then, with her bare feet, stepped out into it. At first, she meant only to wet her feet, but as she got into it, the temptation to go deeper grew stronger, so she moved farther out, feeling her dress grow wet as the cool lake water climbed above her knees, then to her waist, then higher.
She looked back at John Henry, and seeing that he still had not seen her, swallowed a laugh over the trick she was playing on him.
When the horses had drunk their fill, John Henry led them away from the water and tied them off to a low-hanging branch.
“I think we can sit here for a while and . . .” John Henry stopped in mid-sentence and looked around, startled that he didn’t see Sasha. “Sasha? Sasha, where are you?” His call reflected some concern.
“I am here,” Sasha replied in a soft, throaty voice.
“Where?”
Sasha laughed, the laughter like the sound of a swiftly moving brook over stones. “John Henry, do you mean you don’t see me?” she teased.
John Henry looked toward the sound and saw, in the silver spread of moonlight on the surface, only Sasha’s head protruding above the water.
“What are you doing in there?” he asked. “Did you fall in?”
“No, I walked in. I was hot, and the water looked cooling,” Sasha said. She started toward the shore then, gradually emerging from the water as she walked. Near the edge she slipped and would have fallen, had John Henry not reached out his hand to her.
Using his hand to steady her, she emerged from the lake dripping wet.
She smiled at John Henry, enjoying her little joke on him, until she saw his eyes studying her with passionate intensity. At first, she wondered what he was looking at—then she was aware of an extraordinary coolness on her breasts, a breeze against the dampness. Glancing down, she saw that the action of the water had caused her dress to become almost transparent, and John Henry’s gaze was resting upon her breasts, clearly visible through the wet cloth. Quickly, she crossed her arms across her chest.
“John Henry, you are staring,” she said.
“Yes, I suppose I am,” John Henry replied, making no effort to look away.
“Please, I am growing uncomfortable.”
Smiling, John Henry began unbuttoning his shirt.
“What . . . what are you doing?”
John Henry took his shirt off and handed it to her. “Here,” he said. “This will help you restore some modesty.”
“I fear it is too late for that,” Sasha said.
“If not modesty, then a little dignity,” John Henry suggested.
Sasha chuckled, then put the shirt on. “This is the second time you have defended my—dignity—with your shirt,” she said.
At first, John Henry didn’t know what she was referring to, then he remembered the incident, so many years earlier, with Willie Buck.
“Come,” he said. “I’ll take you back home.”
“John Henry, you are a good and decent man, and you have done the honorable thing, saving me from my own imprudence. I thank you for that.”
“Now is not the time for us, Sasha.”
“When will be the time?”
“Sasha, I am in a dangerous profession. I could be killed at any time. If we were to be married, it wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“John Henry, do you think I would grieve your death any less because we are not married?”
John Henry put his hands about her waist preparatory to lifting her into the saddle. But before he did, he leaned forward and kissed her.
The kiss was soft and undemanding.
“And, what of us now?” Sasha asked when he drew his lips from hers.
“We shall see what we shall see,” John Henry answered.
It was just after dark when Walks Fast and Straight Arrow rode into the town of Verdigris, butt-weary from the long ride down. Walks Fast and Lean Bear had been to Verdigris many times before, but this would be Straight Arrow’s first visit to the town. They had fifty dollars apiece from the bank job in Spavina. In most towns fifty dollars would be considered a lot of money, but Walks Fast was quick to point out that their money wouldn’t go far here.
“You can get a whore for a dollar anywhere else,” he explained. “Here, they’ll cost you three dollars.”
“Why so much?” Straight Arrow wanted to know.
“There is no law here.”
“There is law everywhere.”
“Not here. Why do you think Lean Bear and I have spent so much time here? It is because there is no policeman who stays here. The people in the town don’t want law. They want people like us.”
“Why?”
“So they can charge much, and we won’t complain,” Walks Fast said.
Verdigris was dark except for the patches of light that spilled out into the street from the windows and doors. The town was noisy with drums and bells. Laughter and loud voices filled the night air, and occasionally a gunshot would ring out, though for the most part the gunshots were in boisterous fun and nothing more.
A woman was leaning over the balcony banister, wearing nothing but an undergarment and it was cut low enough to expose the tops of enormous breasts. Her breasts were large because she was large. “Hey, why don’t you two boys come on up here?” she invited. “I’ll take both of you on for the price of one.”
With her red hair, pasty-white complexion, and flat, twangy accent, she was a definitely a white woman.
“Have you ever had a white woman?” Straight Arrow asked.
“Yes,” Walks Fast answered.
“How was she?”
“She was white,” Walks Fast said without elaboration. He had been with Willie Buck’s Indian Independence Council Raiders then, and they had raped two white girls when they sacked the small town of Kibler, Arkansas. After they finished with the two girls, Willie Buck ordered that they be killed.
Because it was illegal to sell liquor anywhere in The Nations, smuggling whiskey into Indian Territory had become quite a profitable operation. The smuggling was done almost entirely by whites, many of whom had married Indian women in order to give them status as residents of Indian Territory.
The lawless town of Verdigris was more than half white, and more than a quarter Mexican. Even though it was a town in Indian Territory, Indians made up the minority of the population. It was partly because of this makeup that there was no representative of the Indian police in the town. And because it was a lawless town, it made no attempt to hide the trafficking in liquor. Like just about any town anywhere else in the West, Verdigris had a saloon. Unlike many of the other saloons throughout the West, though, the entry to this saloon was not through bat-wing doors, but through a hanging blanket. Inside, the bar was noisy with conversation, nearly all of it in English, but some in Spanish. Nowhere did they hear Cherokee being spoken. There was no piano, but a Mexican was sitting on a stool in the back of the saloon, strumming a guitar.
There was a pretty Mexican girl standing at the end of the bar and she smiled when she saw Walks Fast.
“Walks Fast. You have come back to Elaina! I knew you could not stay away from me!”
Walks Fast went up to her and put his arm a
round her. “Come, Elaina. We will go upstairs.”
“Do you have money?” the girl asked.
“Yes, I have money.” Walks Fast took some money from his pocket and showed it to her.
“All right,” the girl said to Walks Fast. “If you have money to spend on me, then I will go with you.” Teasingly, she put her hand in his hair and twisted a strand of it around her finger. “If you want me,” she added, coquettishly.
“You come with me and I will show you how much I want you,” Walks Fast said, pulling her with him as he walked over to the bar to buy a bottle.
Because the policeman had been killed in Spavina, John Henry Sixkiller, who was now the chief sheriff of the entire Cherokee Nation, took responsibility for the case.
“They killed three men: Rodney Gilbert, the loan officer; Homer Foster, the bank teller; and our policeman, Clyde Running Horse, who was a good man,” Dan Norton said. Norton was the mayor of Spavina. “They also killed Alice Clemons, who was the schoolteacher, and little Sally Shoemaker.”
“Did anyone recognize the men who did this?” John Henry asked.
Norton smiled. “Yes, we know exactly who did it. Several witnesses have identified them. It was Emil Walks Fast and Damon Straight Arrow. Do you know them?”
“Yes, I know both of them. They are often with Edward Lean Bear.”
“They won’t be with Lean Bear anymore,” Norton said. “Lean Bear was with them when they pulled the job, but he was killed by one of the bank customers. I hope you find them, and I hope they hang for what they did here.”
“I will find them, and they will hang. They were sentenced to hang six months ago, but they escaped jail on the very day they were to be executed.”
“Is that a fact? Well, if they have already been convicted, then they know what is in store for them if they are caught. That means they aren’t going to come in easy. Be very careful,” Mayor Norton cautioned.
John Henry started his search by interviewing those who had witnessed the crime. Of the actual robbery, only Wanda Shoemaker, the woman who was in the bank at the time, could give direct testimony. She had lost her daughter and had seen the two bankers killed. Spavina was a town that was still grieving. They were lamenting the death of all the victims, but the town was particularly upset by the killing of the little girl and the schoolteacher.
John Henry visited with the widow of Clyde Running Horse, comforting her as best he could.
“He was a good man,” she said. “It is not good that he would be killed like this. The men who did this, Walks Fast and Straight Arrow, are evil men. I hope they are found and punished.”
“I will find them, and they will be punished,” John Henry promised.
After leaving Running Horse’s widow, John Henry walked down to what had been the police office. There he met Leon Barker. Barker was a white man, a former sheriff from Missouri who had settled in the Indian Territory. He had no official standing, though he was acting as a law officer until someone else could be assigned to replace Clyde Running Horse.
“I thought you would be sending us someone,” Barker said. “I didn’t know you would come yourself.”
“Clyde Running Horse was a good man,” John Henry said. “I felt the need to come myself.”
“Yes, sir, well I’m glad you did. I’ll just get Clyde’s things out of here and over to his widow, and the office is all yours.”
“I understand one of the robbers was killed.”
“Yes. Lean Bear, his name was. He was killed by Glen Black, who was one of the two men who was killed in the bank.”
“Where is Lean Bear now?”
“Oh, we’ve already buried him. Planted his ass in a hole outside of town.”
“Did he have anything on him?”
Barker smiled. “I told the others that you would want to look at the stuff. Yes, he did, and I’ve got it all right here.”
Barker opened a drawer and took out a cloth bundle. He unrolled the cloth and showed the contents to John Henry. Barker had two silver dollars, a half dollar, three quarters, and a dime in money. He had a bone whistle, a black, round rock, and a brass coin of some sort. John Henry turned the coin over in his hand, examining it closely, trying to figure out what it was.
Barker chuckled. “You don’t know what that is, do you?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s a whore’s chit.”
“A what?”
“It’s a chit that whores give out. It’s good for one visit.”
“I’ve never seen such a thing.”
“You haven’t spent a lot of time around whorehouses, have you? Anyway, they are mostly in places like Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico. About the only one place in The Nations that you might find something like that would be in Verdigris.”
“Verdigris,” John Henry said. “Yes, I have heard of that place. I have never been there, but I have heard of it.”
“What have you heard about it?”
“I have heard that it is an evil place.”
“You have heard right, my friend,” Barker said. “There is no law in Verdigris.”
“That is where they will go,” John Henry said.
In Verdigris, Walks Fast and Straight Arrow had befriended three white men. Dan McGuire, Barry Appleby, and Ken Crader were in the Indian Territory because they were wanted on murder charges back in Kansas. The three men were talking about a bank they wanted to rob.
“The bank is in a place called Greysons, about thirty miles east of here,” Appleby said.
“That’s in the Osage Nation,” Walks Fast said.
“You think the banks in the Osage nation don’t have any money?” McGuire asked. “I happen to know that this bank has a lot of money. At least twenty thousand dollars.”
“How do you know it has so much money?”
“Because I seen it in a newspaper. They was braggin’ about how much money they had. Robbin’ that bank is goin’ to be as easy as takin’ candy from a baby.”
“If you think it is going to be so easy, why haven’t you robbed it?” Straight Arrow asked.
“Maybe you ain’t noticed but we are white men,” Crader said. “As soon as we ride into town, everyone is going to notice us. But if we rode in with a couple of Injuns now, why folks would just think we are doin’ some business.”
“And we are goin’ to do some business,” McGuire said, laughing. “Yes, sir, we are goin’ to do a lot of business with them.”
“What do you think, Walks Fast?” Straight Arrow asked.
Walks Fast stroked his chin. “Nothing is easy,” he said. “We thought the bank in Spavina would be easy. But Lean Bear was killed, and we only got a hundred dollars.”
“I’m tellin’ you, this one will be easy,” Appleby said. “And it has a hell of a lot more than one hundred dollars.”
“All right,” Walks Fast said. “We’ll do it. But I’m going to stay here a few more days, spending money and enjoying myself.”
“We can wait,” McGuire said.
Chapter Six
As John Henry rode toward Verdigis, he recalled a conversation he once had with Captain LeFlores about the town. “We don’t keep a policeman there because less than a quarter of the population of the town is Indian. We have no jurisdiction over the white people who are there, and the town is too small to have a U.S. Marshal there,” Captain LeFlores explained.
“What has happened to it? How can a town survive with no law?” John Henry asked.
“It can’t survive,” LeFlores replied. “There is no longer any stagecoach or mail service into the town. They have no representatives on the governing council. It’s as if the town didn’t even exist and I think most people wish it didn’t exist.”
“I would think that a place like that would be a haven for outlaws who want to hide out,” John Henry said.
“It is. But I think the general consensus is now, as long as they stay there, they aren’t bothering anyone else. We have sort of ass
umed an informal, ‘we won’t bother you, if you won’t bother us,’ attitude. Not exactly the best way to handle it, I admit. But that’s the way it is.”
It was approaching nighttime, but not quite dark as John Henry rode into the small town of Verdigris. Verdigris, more than any other settlement in the Indian Territory, was a town that came alive at night. As John Henry rode into town, he didn’t have to look for the saloon. All he had to do was follow the noise.
He passed a building that had a sign advertising itself as a stagecoach depot, and he remembered LeFlores telling him that no stagecoach line serviced Verdigris anymore. Curious, John Henry stopped, dismounted, then went over to the building to look around. The front door was hanging by a single hinge, and when he looked inside he saw the nothing but dirt and cobwebs. A schedule board still hung on the back wall, but whatever information there had been on it was now so faded as to be unreadable.
In front of the abandoned stagecoach depot was a well and, looking down into it, John Henry saw that it was no more than fifteen-feet deep and completely dry.
His curiosity satisfied, John Henry remounted and continued his ride on through town, headed for the saloon. He knew, without a doubt, that if Walks Fast and Straight Arrow were in town, they would be at the saloon.
Walks Fast and Straight Arrow had been in Verdigris for almost two weeks now, and Straight Arrow discovered that Walks Fast was right about everything being more expensive here. A shot of whiskey was ten cents anywhere else, but here it was a quarter for one glass.
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