Kill the Indian

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Another cowhand said, “Why aren’t you chargin’ that buck with murder? He killed Vince Christensen. Slit his throat like you’d do a deer.”

  “Daniel Killstraight didn’t kill anyone.” That was another familiar voice. Turning, Daniel spotted the Cherokee policeman, Hugh Gunter, sitting at the edge of the guardhouse’s porch, his long legs dangling toward the ground. Gunter was whittling a stick, but now he stopped and pointed the blade of a Barlow knife at one of Carmody’s cowhands.

  Daniel looked around. Carmody stood in front of the steps to the guardhouse, facing Harvey Noble. Behind the big rancher waited four cowhands, holding the reins to their mounts in their left hands, their right palms balancing purposefully over the butts of their own weapons. Carmody’s big dun grazed on Army grass. A buckboard was parked beside the dun. In the back, Daniel saw, were two pine coffins.

  Hugh Gunter was still speaking. “Your man got his throat slit. Daniel yonder didn’t even have a knife on him. Plus, you idiots yourselves said you found Daniel shot in the side, his horse killed, three hundred yards from where your ramrod’s body was found. Now how in the hell do you figure Daniel killed him?”

  Before one of the cowhands could speak, Gunter cut him off. “Maybe you reckon that Daniel is a big medicine man among the Comanches. Maybe he used some redskin magic to slit this Christensen gent’s throat. Then changed that knife into a Forty-Four Remington. Then managed to shoot his own horse in the head. ’Course, that must have been more Comanche magic ’cause the bullet we dug out of that horse’s head was a chunk of lead that had to be Fifty caliber. About the same caliber that likely cut Daniel’s side.”

  “Who the hell are you?” another cowboy demanded.

  Gunter closed the blade. “I’m your better.”

  The reins dropped to the grass. The cowhand made a beeline, but stopped at the click of the hammer of a Colt now held in Harvey Noble’s right hand.

  “How many bodies you want to haul back to Texas, Carmody?”

  “Whit,” Carmody said, “let it lie.”

  The cowboy’s fist clenched. His body shook. But he stayed put.

  A blond-haired cowboy with a freckled face—likely still in his teens—cleared his throat. “Well, Vince sure didn’t shoot this Indian, neither. Not if you say it was a Fifty caliber. Vince had a Forty-caliber Bullard.”

  Another cowboy snickered. “And he couldn’t hit the backside of a barn, let alone a movin’ target three hundred yards away.”

  “We never said your cowhand shot anybody, either,” Hugh Gunter said. “Hard to shoot anybody, with your throat slit ear to ear. But you Texians’ll believe anything.”

  “Hugh …” Noble’s voice revealed tension. “Let’s behave like gentlemen.”

  “Gentlemen!” Carmody spat. “Damyankees. Damned prairie niggers.”

  “I didn’t come here to start a ruction, Carmody,” Noble said, his voice powerful and steady once again. “Came this way to stop one. And I’m no Yank. Born, bred, and baptized in Arkansas.” He reached into his jacket, and pulled out a folded set of papers. “This here is a court order that says you are to get your Texas longhorns off The Big Pasture. Forthwith. That means no dilly-dallyin’. If you don’t, Carmody, I’ll just say it’s ration day and the Comanches, Kiowas, and Apaches’ll have three thousand head to slaughter.”

  Carmody made a start for the marshal, but the Colt stopped him, too. “I got it legal,” Carmody stammered. “Isa-tai … he signed.”

  “Carmody”—Noble shook his head pathetically—“you must be an idiot. After you come up here and got an ignorant Comanche to sign three copies of a letter you wrote out, Quanah Parker and the Northern Texas Stock Growers’ Association were having their lawyers file writs in courts. You gave one copy of that thing you wrote to your cowhands to give to any Indian or agent, kept the other to yourself, gave another one to Dan Waggoner. Figured that made everything legal, especially since you had witnesses sign it, too.”

  “Witnesses.” Hugh Gunter chuckled.

  “Yeah.” Noble’s head shook. “Vince Christensen served time in Huntsville for manslaughter. He also rode for you. So did that other cowhand, can’t rightly recollect his name. And then you got George McEveety. He left two wives behind in Mississippi. A bigamist. Also, the way I understand it, a liar, cheat, whoremonger, whiskey peddler, and genuine rapscallion. Yes, sir, that’s a fine band of witnesses you got.”

  Sol Carmody stood, flexing his fingers. Noble paused to give him time to speak, but, when the rancher said nothing, Noble kept talking. “You didn’t even file the agreement you got with any court. Didn’t have it notarized. This ain’t the old days, Carmody. It’s Eighteen Eighty-Eight. We’re civilized. Mostly.”

  “That paper …”

  “Is as worthless as you are, Carmody. Hell, you might be facin’ criminal charges of extortion. Judge Parker and me’ll have to talk that over with the commissioner. You didn’t need that grass. You got plenty in the Cherokee Nation. Ain’t that right, Hugh?”

  Gunter nodded. “He did. But that agreement is being reconsidered after what all’s come up hereabouts. Sol Carmody ain’t the type any of us Five Civilized Tribes want to associate with.”

  The rancher’s mouth hung open.

  “You just thought you could take advantage of these poor Indians and make a handsome profit for yourself,” Noble told him. “What was that we figured he’d make out with, Hugh?”

  Gunter answered, “Nineteen thousand two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  Noble smiled. “Sounds like grand larceny. Yes, sir, a real handsome profit … if it worked.”

  “It didn’t,” Gunter said. “Stupid Texians.”

  Daniel fought off dizziness. Comprehending all this was proving too hard.

  “A Comanch’ killed Tony Johnson, Marshal,” another cowboy said. “Witnesses will swear to that.”

  “And I got witnesses who’ll say they was part of a tribal police posse stoppin’ a bunch of trespassin’ Texians from lynchin’ a Comanche peace officer.” Noble shook his head in disgust.

  “That’s for a jury to decide, ain’t it?” yelled another cowboy, his head bandaged, left eye blackened. Apparently he was the one upon whom Charles Flint had counted coup.

  “I ain’t wastin’ Judge Parker’s time on something as picayune as this.” Noble waved his Colt at all the cowhands. “Your Johnson boy was killed by Isa-tai, but that was self-defense. Criminy, I should run the lot of you in for tryin’ to lynch a bona-fide peace officer. But then them ticky mossyhorns would still be eatin’ Comanche grass that rightfully belongs to Capt’n Hall and his outfit.”

  Noble’s tone changed. “The other one, your top hand, well, you’re damned right. That was murder. Cold-blooded. But Killstraight didn’t do it. I’m certain sure of that. You rest easy, Carmody. All of you Texas brush poppers. I’ll find the son-of-a-bitch, and that son-of-a-bitch’ll hang.”

  “Even if it was an Injun?” the man named Whit asked. “’Cause you seem to like a lot of Injuns, Marshal.” The cowboy glared at Gunter, who pushed his silk top hat back with the stick he had been whittling, and smiled.

  Another rider came loping toward the guardhouse.

  “It was not an Indian,” said Daniel, who suddenly faced better than a half-dozen stunned men.

  He took a step down. Gently. Another. His side seared, but he made it to the bottom without falling. Rain Shower stood behind him, her face worried. He wet his lips and said, “I saw a man. White man. On a dark horse. He rode over the hill, away from camp. He must have seen your riders coming across The Big Pasture.”

  “Could you recognize him, Daniel?” Gunter asked.

  His head shook. “Too far away. He wore a hat. Tan, I think, but it could have been covered with dirt. And …”

  The rider reined in on a blood bay gelding. Daniel swallowed. The man slid off the saddle, grabbing his back with one hand, while fetching a note pad with the other. “Damnation,” he said. “Looks like I’ve got another story that
’ll get me a job back in the East. Showdown at Fort Sill! What’s going on here? I’m Billy Kyne. Dallas Herald.”

  The ends of Kyne’s duster flapped in the wind.

  * * * * *

  “So, Marshal, let me get all this down straight. Factual, for once in the Herald’s short, fruitless life.” Billy Kyne took a swig from his flask, which he passed to the federal deputy.

  They sat in Noble’s and Gunter’s camp in the sage west of Fort Sill near Cache Creek, the Cherokee poking the fire under the coffee pot, and Noble, looking worn out and pale, rubbing a foot with one hand while sitting on a rock.

  Daniel sat beside Rain Shower. She held his hand.

  “You read the Herald story. We telegraphed that to all the Fort Worth papers, even to the federal marshal. I’m sure you saw it. Heard about it in the dram shops and all.”

  “All I saw was the writ the marshal give me. All I heard was what he told me.” Noble took a drink, and passed the flask to Gunter, who pitched it back to Kyne without taking a sip.

  “Well, the Herald … well, actually me … broke the story. It’ll be in Harper’s Weekly soon, I assure you. Don’t know how many papers in the East. Carmody’s scheme has been foiled. He attempted to blackmail the Northern Texas Stock Growers’ Association, wanted to deprive the great Comanche nation”—winking at Daniel and Rain Shower—“of wealth the tribe desperately needs. But justice, thanks to the Dallas Herald, prevails. Can I quote you, Marshal?”

  Noble drank again from the flask Kyne had tossed him. “All I saw was the writ the marshal give me,” the deputy repeated. “All I heard was what he told me.”

  “Excellent. This case is closed.” Kyne waited for the flask to come back his way.

  It was Gunter who spoke. “Hell, it ain’t over. Who the hell killed that Texas waddie? Who the hell shot Daniel?”

  Kyne looked perplexed. “I thought the cowhand shot Daniel.”

  “Uhn-huh.” Gunter flung the stick into the sage. “Then cut his own throat out of remorse.”

  The end of the pencil went into Kyne’s mouth. He turned it, biting, several rotations before removing it and writing something in his tablet. “Well, this is excellent to be sure. Another mystery. Another article for the Herald, or better yet, the New York Tribune.” He wrote again, then looked at Daniel. “And who tried to murder Quanah? Right, Daniel?”

  That got both Noble’s and Gunter’s attention.

  “What are you talkin’ about?” Noble asked. “From what I read, that was an accident.”

  The eyes bored into Daniel, who took a deep breath, slowly exhaled and said, “It was no accident.”

  They waited for his explanation.

  * * * * *

  “You say it was a white man, eh, Killstraight?” Kyne was talking again, talking and scribbling, scribbling and talking. “The one who shot you? The one who slit the cowboy’s throat?”

  Instead of answering, Daniel asked. “When did you get here, Mister Kyne?”

  “I arrived at Fort Sill when they carried you into …” He dropped the pencil, and smiled weakly. “Killstraight. Surely …” His eyes darted to Noble’s, then Gunter’s, to Rain Shower’s, and back to Daniel’s. “Killstraight. We’re pards. You don’t think I’d …” He wet his lips.

  Undeterred, Kyne scooped up his pencil, slid it over his ear, and thumbed back several pages in his tablet. “This is interesting, gentlemen. Most interesting. Three men witnessed the document Carmody signed with Isa-tai. Two of those are dead. The third is George McEveety, a wretched man who runs the foul trading post in these godless parts. I think it’s time for me to interview that cad and get to the bottom of this. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.” He tipped his hat at Rain Shower. “And you, dear squaw, as beautiful and as lovely as Hera, daughter of Kronos, wife of Zeus, I bid adieu.”

  Even before Billy Kyne was on his horse, Gunter had filled a tin mug with coffee. “Daniel,” the Cherokee asked angrily, “how in hell did you hook up with that insufferable son-of-a-bitch?”

  Daniel smiled. “Actually,” he said, “he reminded me of you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  In the cabin the Pale Eyes had built for Ben Buffalo Bone’s father, Daniel ducked under the pinto’s neck, his right hand gently rubbing the coarse hair. He came up on the other side of the horse, walking over straw, speaking softly, his hand never leaving the pinto’s body. The stallion’s tail swished. “Good boy,” Daniel said, and stepped away, admiring the animal.

  “Cuhtz Bávi is too generous,” Daniel said. “I should not accept such a gift, for I have nothing of value to return to your uncle.”

  Rain Shower grabbed Daniel’s hand and squeezed it. “Cuhtz Bávi,” she said, “thinks he will get the horse back.”

  She giggled.

  It was a Mexican Hat pinto, and Daniel knew what The People said of a horse like this: ride it, and you are invincible. That Rain Shower’s uncle, the head of the household since her father’s death, would give such a gift overwhelmed him.

  “Do you … ?” He stopped. Saying—Do you think you would be worth such a pony?—did not strike him as a smart thing to say, especially considering how much he enjoyed her hand in his.

  “What will you call him?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “What would you?”

  She held her chin, considering. The white cotton dress she wore highlighted her round face and raven hair. Ben Buffalo Bone, Daniel decided, was wrong. Rain Shower was far more beautiful than her younger sister. She would be worth twenty horses like the Mexican Hat pinto.

  “I would call him Kwihnai.”

  “Eagle.” Daniel nodded. “It is a good name. I will call him that.”

  Leaving the horse to graze on hay, Daniel led Rain Shower around the makeshift stall and into the portion of the house where Daniel lived. Gingerly Daniel bent down and picked up the saddle, a wood and deer-horn frame covered with rawhide and a Navajo saddle blanket.

  “You are leaving?” Rain Shower sounded hurt.

  “I must try out my new pony,” he said lightly, forcing a smile.

  “Your wounds have not completely healed. You should not ride hard.”

  “I will go no faster than a trot.”

  “You should not go far.”

  “I won’t go far.”

  “How far?”

  He stopped his work, and grinned at her. “Crater Creek.”

  After gathering his hackamore along with the saddle, Daniel went back to Eagle. Rain Shower followed him.

  “That is where Nagwee has his lodge,” she said.

  “That is who I must see.”

  She did not speak again until Daniel had saddled his new horse, and returned to his living area to gather his holster and revolver. Her face turned hard as her frown.

  “I am not going there to arrest Nagwee,” he said lightly.

  Silence. Then, “You think Isa-tai is responsible for all of this.”

  He did not answer. Instead, he checked the caps on the Remington.

  “Isa-tai would not …”

  “Isa-tai despises Quanah,” he said. The jovial banter was gone, and he regretted that, but he knew what he had to do. “He would have given away The Big Pasture and The People would have nothing.”

  “He did not shoot you.”

  Daniel holstered the Remington. “He carries a rifle like the one the Pale Eyes used to hunt buffalo with.”

  “Which he took off a Pale Eyes he himself killed.” She raised a finger. “You said it was a taibo who shot you.”

  “I saw a man in taibo clothes riding over the hill. Having thought more of this, I now realize that person did not have to be the one who shot me.” It could have been Billy Kyne, riding away upon hearing the shots for the reporter was, at heart, a coward. It could have been anyone. Hell, it could have been Isa-tai, dressed up in pale-eyes clothes. Even had Daniel been able to identify the man, he could never prove that rider had shot at him. Not in a taibo courtroom.

  “Isa-tai saved Quanah�
��s life,” Rain Shower argued. “He and Nagwee performed the Big Doctoring.”

  “And Isa-tai painted his face red.”

  “That is his puha. And what does it mean? The paint he wears does not make him a murderer.”

  Sighing, Daniel explained the red prints that had been found on the windowpane and lamp globes at the room above the Fort Worth mercantile. “Billy Kyne said it was red ink.”

  “Ink.” Rain Shower shook her head. “A Nermernuh uses vermillion, not ink.”

  “Perhaps it was vermillion.” He led Eagle out of the cabin and into the sunlight.

  “If he had meant to kill you,” Rain Shower said, “you would be dead. Isa-tai has the best eyes of any of The People when it comes to shooting a long gun. Tetecae told me that himself.”

  Daniel swung into the saddle.

  “He saved your life,” Rain Shower said. “He killed one of the Pale Eyes who was trying to kill you. He saved the life of Quanah.”

  He wanted to explain, but found no words. Rain Shower started to argue more, but her expression changed, and she stiffened.

  “I must see Nagwee,” he said. “I will speak to you later.”

  “I must see someone, too,” she said.

  He pressed the paint horse’s sides with his moccasins, and felt Eagle take flight.

  * * * * *

  In the blistering heat of the day, with no clouds to block the sun’s rays, Daniel found Nagwee sitting in his brush arbor. Three dogs barked as he rode Eagle across Crater Creek, and Daniel greeted the old puhakat, and swung from the saddle.

  “Maruaweeka!” Nagwee called out, and began gathering his pipe and tobacco. “That is a fine horse you ride, my son.”

  “Thank you. It was a gift from Cuhtz Bávi.”

  The old man laughed. “You should be giving Cuhtz Bávi horses, not the other way around.”

  Daniel stepped inside the arbor, and Nagwee motioned for him to sit. Hot as the afternoon was, Nagwee had a small fire going in the brush arbor, as if he had expected someone would join him for a smoke.