Kill the Indian

by Johnny D. Boggs

“What’s this mean?” Kyne asked.

  “I don’t know,” Daniel answered honestly. “But the window was shut.”

  Kneeling, Kyne squinted, pursed his lips, and looked at Daniel. “You reckon it’s blood?”

  Daniel shook his head. “Blood would have dried brown. That’s still reddish.”

  “Uh-huh. Ink, by my guess.”

  Ink. Daniel had not thought of that. Red ink.

  “I use a pencil myself.” Straightening, Kyne said, “But be that as it may, this thumb print … that’s sure what it looks like … could have been here a day, a month, a year. Figure this. If they don’t bother locking their doors at this place, then it isn’t likely the chambermaids clean any window frequently, either.”

  “She made the bed,” Daniel pointed out.

  Smiling, Kyne reached into a pocket of his plaid sack suit, and withdrew a flask. “Sure you don’t want a snort, Killstraight?” Without waiting for a reply, he unscrewed the lid, and tossed his head back as he drank. “Was your bed made?”

  Daniel had to think. “Yes, it was.”

  “Really. Even with all the commotion going on around here all day? That’s impressive. All right, tomorrow, you wait on the maid. With luck, it’ll be the same gal who cleaned your room today. You ask her if she made up the room across from yours.”

  He nodded. He had planned on doing that already.

  “Why would they leave the door unlocked?” Daniel asked.

  Billy Kyne shrugged. “Honest mistake, maybe.”

  Daniel threw Kyne’s earlier argument back in his face. “But one would be foolish to keep his door unlocked in this part of town.’”

  The reporter, however, wasn’t listening. He was moving back to the globes of the lamps, looking at the one that was lit, then at the other. “Well, looky here.” His grin revealed tobacco-stained teeth.

  Daniel moved from the window to the bed. He didn’t see it until Kyne tapped the smudge with his pencil.

  Another red mark. Fainter, but clear enough.

  “Don’t expect no medal yet, Killstraight. Did you check ol’ Yellow Bear’s thumbs and fingers?”

  His shoulders sagged, and he sighed. As a detective, he had much to learn. Billy Kyne read the answer on Daniel’s face. “Too bad. Likely the undertaker’s already cleaned up the ol’ bird for his trip to the hereafter.” He sipped again from his flask.

  An idea struck Daniel, and his face brightened. “But the one who died here … he would not have used an ink pen.”

  Perplexed, Kyne lowered the flask. “‘The one who died here?’”

  Daniel had to explain Comanche etiquette, and for the first time William J. Kyne scribbled something in his notebook. While he was writing, he said, “Well, you’re forgetting the power of a celebrity, kid. And ‘the one who died here’ reminded me of ol’ Sitting Bull, the Sioux.”

  “Lakota,” Daniel corrected. At Carlisle, the Lakotas he had known hated being called Sioux.

  Kyne didn’t seem to hear.

  “Before I landed in this dump of a town working at this dump of a newspaper, I was working in Saginaw, Michigan, when Buffalo Bill Cody brought his Wild West to town. Sitting Bull, the very red bastard who killed Custer, was touring with Cody, and let me tell you he was the star of that spectacle. Signed autographs for scores of children, men, and women. Even soldiers, mind you. Dumb son-of-a-bitch that I was, I didn’t get one. Mainly on account I didn’t have a buck to spend on his John Hancock. That ol’ boy made more money on autographs in one night than I’d make in a month, and that’s on top of the fifty a month he was pulling from Cody.”

  Daniel frowned. “Then I must ask the cowboy, Briggs, if the one who is no more signed”—he tested the word—“autographs … while he was wandering from saloon to saloon.”

  The pencil Kyne held waved in front of Daniel’s face. “There’s one other thing you need to consider.”

  Without speaking, Daniel waited.

  “Quanah Parker, he who isn’t dead yet, was signing scores of autographs yesterday. He could have blown out the lamp. And he could have closed the window.”

  That would be easy enough to check, but something else troubled Daniel. He kept thinking back to earlier that day, visualizing Charles Flint wiping his hands with a handkerchief. Charles Flint, the bookkeeper. A bookkeeper wrote in ink, right? He did not want to think that. He liked Flint. Flint’s father, on the other hand …

  “I like your theory, kid.” The reporter filed away pencil, notebook, and flask. “But even my idiotic editor, who plumb loves to give Fort Worth hell, wouldn’t print what we have. That’s because what we have, Killstraight, is a bunch of nothing. Now you get some evidence, and that’ll be a whale of a story. ‘Indian policeman suspects foul play in Cowtown.’ That would be our headline. Or something a hell of a lot stronger. You said you told Capt’n Hall what you thought, and he didn’t really believe it, right? You tell anybody else?”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “You trust me, don’t you, kid?”

  His lips just turned up a tad, not enough to be called a smile, but as close as Daniel could muster. Again he shook his head.

  Kyne tilted his head back, and laughed. “That’s good, boy. Don’t trust the press. Especially the Dallas Herald. Especially Billy Kyne. You probably don’t trust any white man, do you, Killstraight?”

  No answer, although Daniel was thinking how much he wished Deputy US Marshal Harvey P. Noble was in Fort Worth right now. Kyne opened the door and stepped into the hall. After Daniel had joined him, Kyne closed the door.

  “Too bad we don’t have a witness. Streets were full of people last night. Maybe somebody saw something.”

  Daniel was already ahead of Kyne on that front. He remembered the drunken cowboy in the alley, the police officer who had scolded him, almost arrested him. He didn’t tell Kyne this, deciding it would be better to keep that to himself. Although he had smiled when he had let Kyne know he didn’t trust him, the truth was he didn’t trust him.

  “I’ll have to do some checking,” Kyne was saying. “Digging, rather. This won’t be easy, not since I wore out my welcome with Andy at the hotel. And Tom Bode, that skinflint of an editor at the Herald, he sure won’t cotton to the idea of me trotting back and forth from Dallas to this ol’ burg every day. But I warrant I can talk him into it, for a couple days, anyhow. Anything to bring scandal to Fort Worth. First thing we need to do, though, is prove that Quanah didn’t blow out those lamps, close that window.”

  He tilted his head to the door across the hall.

  Daniel went to the room where Nagwee and Isa-tai tended to Quanah. Billy Kyne followed, but Daniel turned, raising his hand. “Not you,” he said. “I will check.”

  “Now, kid …” Daniel’s stare ended Kyne’s begging.

  Turning, Daniel tried the knob—unlocked—and pushed open the door. He stopped, staring, not believing.

  “Criminy.” Billy Kyne quickly drew out both pencil and notebook. “Where the hell is everybody?”

  Chapter Eleven

  His heart sank, and he trembled, knowing that Quanah had died, that Isa-tai and Nagwee had sneaked the body out of the Taylor & Barr building. Having learned what the Pale Eyes would do to Yellow Bear, they would not allow Quanah to be subjected to such sacrilege. Even Isa-tai, who despised Quanah, was too much Nermernuh to let Quanah receive a taibo burial.

  Turning, bumping so hard into Kyne that he knocked the reporter against the wall, Daniel stepped into the hallway. Where? How? He started toward the stairs, stopped, turned.

  “Damnation!” Kyne had hurried out of the room, slamming the door behind him. “I told Jason to let me know if that chief bought the farm.” He shot Daniel a glance, saying, “I’ll check the funeral parlor,” then ran toward the exit.

  Daniel waited until he heard Kyne’s feet pounding the stairs out front, then he moved down the hall and entered Room 4. For the first time since arriving in Fort Worth, he felt a breeze. He walked to the open window, and lean
ed out.

  Isa-tai and Nagwee would have known better than to take Quanah down the stairs, onto the crowded streets. It would have been difficult, but he could picture Nagwee nudging his way out of the window, stepping down onto the roof of the neighboring building that butted against the mercantile, grabbing Quanah’s shoulders and carefully backing up until Isa-tai was outside, gripping Quanah’s feet.

  Daniel slipped through the window, and moved across the flat roof. Yes, he said to himself, nodding when he spotted the crates stacked against the alley wall. That’s how they had done it. The wooden boxes would have been like stairs, and Daniel followed them until his moccasins touched dirt.

  Although the alley was empty, noise echoed across the wooden and brick façades. A gunshot boomed. A whistle screeched. Hell’s Half Acre was turning lively tonight.

  “Where would they have taken him?” Daniel asked himself aloud, and looked north and west toward the Trinity River. Maybe. Not Main Street, not Houston. Too crowded this time of night. He hurried past Rusk Street, across Calhoun, all the way to Jones, and stopped.

  Which way? Down toward Fort Worth’s “Bloody Third Ward,” toward the Texas and Pacific depot, the railroad? Or to the banks of the Trinity, heading north, trying to get Quanah closer to the land of The People? Perhaps East, toward the rising sun, out of town?

  A nighthawk sounded, its cry carrying above the ruction from Houston Street, and Daniel walked toward it, moving down the dark, deserted street. After two blocks, doubt crept into his mind. He even wondered if he had actually heard a hawk, or was that just his imagination? He often thought of the marsh hawk as his puha—it had certainly been his father’s—but now he wondered if he should just turn around, go back to the room, wait for Isa-tai and Nagwee to return. If they ever would.

  The streets became more alive with glowing yellow light shining out of the windows of brothels and saloons. The breeze carried a mixture of smells: horse manure, stale beer, dust, vomit.

  A drunken cowboy brushed Daniel’s shoulder, muttered something he could not understand. A horse whinnied in front of a hitching rail. Daniel found more people on the streets as he moved southeast, and the tintamarre of laughter, words, and a strumming banjo echoed inside his head. When he reached the Waco Tap Saloon at Seventh Street, he stopped.

  “Hey, sugar,” a woman called from the corner, her words a slurred Texas drawl, “come on over here, hon!”

  Ignoring her, he bit his lip.

  A horse raced from Calhoun Street, its rider pulling so hard on the reins the horse skidded to a stop in front of the saloon. The rider turned in the saddle, and yelled through the open doors: “Billy! Billy! Get your arse out of here, kid!”

  That was pointless. Billy could not have heard the man’s shouts unless he were standing outside the Waco Tap Saloon.

  Swearing slightly, the cowboy leaped from the saddle, tripped on the boardwalk, and flew into the saloon.

  “C’mon, sugar!” the woman called again. “Cleopatra will show you a good time.”

  Daniel sighed, crossed the street, and moved back toward Rusk.

  “Two dollars!” the woman yelled with desperation. “And I got some mescal that won’t cost you nothin’!”

  A moment later, he stopped and turned. The cowboy and his companion had burst through the saloon’s doorway, and Daniel thought he had heard the one called Billy say something about a teepee.

  The cowboy swung into the saddle, while Billy moved down the hitching post until he came to a small bay.

  “I tell you, Billy,” the first one said, “there’s a damned teepee in the middle of the wagon yard.”

  “You’re drunk.” Billy backed the bay onto the street, tipped his hat at the woman on the corner, and spurred his horse.

  They galloped past Daniel, wheeling their horses at the next intersection, disappearing as they rode north on Rusk. Billy was likely right. His friend must be drunk, yet what were the odds? Daniel took off running, crossing the street, leaping over a cowhand sleeping off a drunk in the middle of the boardwalk. The cowboys had vanished, and there were two wagon yards just up the block, the Texas and the City, but Daniel knew the one he wanted.

  A crowd was already gathered, fighting for a better look inside the Texas Wagon Yard on the corner of Rusk and Sixth.

  “Excuse me,” he said, and slipped between a man in a bell crown hat and a snuff-dipping woman leaning on a cane before being stopped by a taibo wall. He tapped a shoulder and asked for a path, but nobody listened until the snuff-dipping woman spit into a coffee can she clutched with the hand not holding the cane and yelled, “Hey, let this Injun through. Maybe he knows what’s goin’ on here!”

  Shoulders parted, eyes stared, voices whispered.

  Something resembling a path appeared, and Daniel meandered through, trying to ignore the stares. One person even ran his fingers through his long hair, then told a companion, “I touched me a red savage.”

  “Should have taken his scalp, Lou,” another voice said, answered by a chorus of sniggers.

  The last two people, a blacksmith in his work apron rubbing rough hands through an even rougher beard, and a one-eyed Negro with thumbs hooked in his waistband, stepped aside, and Daniel stepped clear, halting beside a wheelless phaeton, its axles propped up on thick blocks of wood.

  By The People’s standards, it would not be much of a lodge. Lacking the needed ten to twenty buffalo hides, Isa-tai and Nagwee had fashioned canvas they must have borrowed from the wagons parked along the Sixth Street side of the sprawling yard, and fetched cedar poles out of two black birch farm wagons parked in the middle of the yard.

  A Nermernuh teepee could be raised in fifteen minutes, but The People considered that women’s work. He could not imagine Nagwee and Isa-tai getting this set up, especially since they had to improvise, yet there stood a teepee, the entrance facing east, smoke wafting through the hole, and a loud roaring coming from inside.

  “What’s that noise?” someone asked.

  “I ain’t goin’ in to find out.”

  In front of the teepee, a two-foot deep ditch had been dug running north and south for roughly six feet. Floating in the breeze was an eagle feather attached to the top of an iron lantern rod at the edge of the corner closest to the teepee’s doorway.

  Taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling, Daniel walked to the split in the canvas. He removed his badge and coins, leaving them at the edge of the pit, for metal was not allowed inside a curing lodge, leaped into the ditch, jumped out, and entered the teepee.

  Anyone could enter a curing lodge, though usually only other sick ones would come in except for the puhakat’s singers and helpers. Daniel moved clockwise around the fire, and sat cross-legged on the north side.

  Quanah lay on a blanket along the west-facing side of the teepee. At least he’s still alive, Daniel thought.

  Above Quanah stood Nagwee, draped in a heavy buffalo robe, sweating profusely, whipping his yuane, the bull-roarer known among The People as “warm wind,” over his head. When Nagwee whirled the thin piece of wood attached by a long string, the roar of wind made Daniel’s head throb. Isa-tai had stopped singing and sat beside a drum. He gave four beats, then stopped, arched back his head, and yelled.

  Outside, the crowd’s voices grew louder.

  This was pianahuwait, the Big Doctoring of the Beaver Ceremony. The People were never much for group dances. They had performed the Sun Dance only once, at Isa-tai’s urging, and that was right before the disastrous raid at Adobe Walls. Daniel had performed the Eagle Dance, but never had he actually seen a Beaver Ceremony. Usually a loved one would request a great puhakat to perform the ritual for someone suffering from the lung sickness or maybe after a witch’s hex.

  He held his breath, observing. From what he understood, there should be a cottonwood trunk in the center and rising all the way to the top of the teepee, but, undoubtedly, that would have been too hard for Isa-tai and Nagwee to find in the middle of Fort Worth. Yet they had managed to secure a
thick wagon tongue where the tree trunk should have been. The puhakats had taken time to dig ponds on the north and south, edging the rims with willows that they had likely found along the riverbank. They had filled each pond with water, undoubtedly from the troughs outside. Mud had been used to form effigies shaped in the form of beavers just outside each pond, facing west.

  The roaring fire told Daniel that the ceremony was just beginning.

  Isa-tai unwrapped deerskin, revealing a pipe. As he tamped tobacco into the bowl, Daniel remembered enough to move to the fire, pull out a stick, and offer the glowing red end to Isa-tai. With a nod, Isa-tai accepted the gesture, and lit the pipe.

  Daniel stared. Isa-tai had to grunt angry guttural words before Daniel realized that Charles Flint’s father was offering him the pipe.

  He accepted it, shamed, took three puffs, and handed it back to Isa-tai, but the puhakat sternly shook his head.

  “Ayarocueté,” Isa-tai said in a hoarse whisper, and held up four fingers.

  Of course. Now Daniel remembered. Four puffs. Four was the mystical number. Four beats of the drums. Four songs. Four puffs. He took another drag, and Isa-tai nodded and accepted the pipe this time.

  Daniel stared as Isa-tai smoked. He had donned a buffalo skull headdress and ceremonial clothes, but what struck Daniel was Isa-tai’s face. Two lines had been painted across his cheek under his eyes, and four smaller vertical lines ran from his bottom lip to his chin. All of the lines were the color of vermillion.

  Red ink … red paint … like what he had seen on the windowpane and lamp’s globe in Quanah’s room.

  Isa-tai drew four times, and handed the pipe to Nagwee. After the healer’s puffs, the pipe returned to Daniel, who suddenly remembered that it was a woman’s job to clean the pipe. He wished Rain Shower were here.

  After Nagwee prayed, he grabbed feathers and strode to the north beaver pond, dipping them into the muddy water, before heading, still singing his prayers, to the south pond to repeat the process. He moved clockwise, always clockwise and, hovering over Quanah, began fanning the Kwahadi leader with the feathers, water dripping off them onto Quanah’s face, his chest, his arms.