Kill the Indian
Page 20
I am dead to you all
I forgot the ways of The People
The People’s ways are good
The People’s ways are good
The People’s ways are good
I gave away our most holy land
Do not mourn me
Do not speak my name
I am not worthy
I am dead to you
I am dead to you
I am dead to you
I am dead to all The People
Hear me now
* * * * *
He hadn’t planned on being here, yet here he stood on a cool spring morning in Fort Smith, Arkansas, having delivered seven prisoners to the cold, dark dungeon to await their trial. Most of his wounds had healed, and his hair was growing back, but now those wounds felt raw again, and he thought that maybe he should just leave. Turn back.
Deputy US Marshal Harvey P. Noble, dressed in the uniform Judge Parker made all his volunteers wear for this special duty, put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “You sure you’re all right, Daniel?”
He nodded.
“All right. If you need anything, I’ll be”—Noble frowned—“up there.”
Daniel watched the tall, aging deputy climb the steps and take his place beside George Maledon.
“Here he comes!” a reporter called out, and a melody of voices rang out.
Two, almost three years earlier, Daniel had watched three men hanged on these same gallows, but on this April morning, Charles Flint, also wearing a new suit, stepped onto the platform to die alone. A man in a dark suit began reading from a paper, but Daniel did not care to listen to the words.
“Hello, Killstraight,” a voice sounded behind him. Daniel glanced over his shoulder, then turned away from the gallows.
William J. Kyne had lost weight. His clothes looked more expensive, and he sported a well-groomed beard. His breath smelled of coffee, not rye. The reporter even looked sober.
“The Herald send you up here?” Daniel asked.
With a wry smile, Kyne reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a card, which he passed on to Daniel. “The Cincinnati Commercial. It isn’t the Tribune, isn’t New York, isn’t even the East Coast. But it’s a start.”
Daniel returned the card, and started to look back. Off in a shady corner, six elderly women began singing as a Black Robe prayed for Charles Flint’s soul.
“I hate to do this, partner,” Kyne said, “but it’s my job.”
Daniel looked back. Kyne withdrew a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “Captain Pratt wired this to the newspaper reporters here. Wonder if you’d care to comment?”
Daniel took the paper, unfolded it, read:
FIRST, I WISH TO EXPRESS MY DEEPEST SYMPATHY TO THE PARENTS, FAMILY, AND FRIENDS OF VINCE CHRISTENSEN STOP
Only the Pale Eyes, Daniel thought bitterly. Not Yellow Bear. Not Rain Shower. But, then, Charles Flint wouldn’t be hanging if he had killed only an old Comanche man and a young Comanche girl.
JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED AND I HOPE THIS ENDS THE UNCALLED FOR ASSAULT THAT HAS BOMBARDED THE CARLISLE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL STOP WE DO NOT TEACH MURDER STOP FOR ALL THOSE NAYSAYERS I AGAIN POINT OUT THAT IT WAS A COMANCHE INDIAN AND A FORMER STUDENT AT THIS SAME SCHOOL WHO SOLVED THIS EVIL CRIME AND BROUGHT THE PERPETRATOR TO JUSTICE STOP I HAVE ALWAYS PREACHED THAT WE MUST KILL THE INDIAN AND NOT THE MAN BUT IN THIS CASE WE MUST EXECUTE BOTH MAN AND INDIAN STOP MAY OUR LORD IN HEAVEN HAVE MERCY ON CHARLES FLINT’S SOUL
Behind him, the trap door thudded, the choir gasped. Daniel heard everything—and felt relief that he had not seen Charles Flint die.
Daniel returned the telegram to Kyne, who wrote something in his notebook, then asked, “Well?”
Daniel shook his head. “I have nothing to say.”
Kyne’s smile was truly sad, but not from disappointment. “That’s what I figured. Don’t worry. I won’t make up something and attribute it to you. Unlike the Dallas Herald, the Commercial has real journalistic standards.” He offered his hand. “I am sorry, Killstraight, about that girl. Can’t remember her name, but I know she was sweet on you, and I reckon you liked her a lot, too.” He shook his head. “She was pretty. It was a damned shame, Killstraight. I mean that.”
To his surprise, Daniel accepted the handshake, then watched Billy Kyne excuse himself, and hurry over with the rest of the newspaper reporters to talk to the marshals, Flint’s court-appointed attorney, and the hangman, Maledon.
Daniel stared at the ring he had made from Rain Shower’s hair. Birds began to sing again.
He had wanted to say something, to let Billy Kyne quote him, but knew he couldn’t. Kyne couldn’t have understood. Nor would have School Father Pratt. Even the agent, Joshua Biggers, who tried to understand, couldn’t. Without glancing back at the gallows, Daniel stepped with the crowd through the gates and into the throng of curious Pale Eyes waiting outside the execution yard’s walls.
As he walked to Eagle, he thought again of what he had wanted to tell Kyne, but what no Pale Eyes could ever comprehend.
When you kill the Indian, you kill the man.
THE END
Author’s Note
Most biographies of Quanah Parker mention his near-death escape from asphyxiation in Fort Worth, Texas. He was sharing a room with Yellow Bear, his father-in-law or uncle (depending on which account) at the Pickwick Hotel or, as Richard F. Selcer notes in Fort Worth Characters, in the second-floor apartment of an adjacent building. In all accounts, a gas lamp was left on, Yellow Bear died, and Quanah barely escaped with his own life.
Murder conspiracy? Highly unlikely, but the story seemed too good an opportunity to pass up, so I turned it into a murder mystery. The incident happened in December 1885, but I moved it to the summer of 1888.
Sources for Fort Worth included the aforementioned Fort Worth Characters by Richard F. Selcer (University of North Texas Press, 2009) as well as Selcer’s Hell’s Half Acre (Texas Christian University Press, 1991) and Oliver Knight’s Fort Worth: Outpost on the Trinity (Texas Christian University Press, 1990).
For the Comanche language, I relied on Comanche Vocabulary: Trilingual Edition, compiled by Manuel García Rejón and translated and edited by Daniel J. Gelo (University of Texas Press, 1995), Comanche Dictionary and Grammar by Lila Wistrand-Robinson and James Armagost (SIL International, 1990), and the Comanche National Museum & Cultural Center in Lawton, Oklahoma.
As always with my Killstraight novels, William T. Hagan’s Indian Police and Judges (Yale University Press, 1966) and United States-Comanche Relations: The Reservation Years (University of Oklahoma Press, 1990) proved valuable, as did The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains by Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel (University of Oklahoma Press, 1952, 1986). Other sources include The Comanches by Joseph H. Cash and Gerald W. Wolff (Indian Tribal Series, 1974); Comanches: The Destruction of a People by T. R. Fehrenbach (Alfred A. Knopf, 1974); Los Comanches: The Horse People, 1751–1845 (University of New Mexico Press, 1993); Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Part 22 by James Hastings and John A. Selbie (Kessinger Publishing, 2003); and The Comanches: A History, 1706–1875 by Thomas W. Kavanagh (University of Nebraska Press, 1996).
I also made a new friend in fellow Comanche enthusiast and historian, S. C. Gwynne, whose Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (Scribner, 2010) was a New York Times bestseller. I gathered a lot of new information and ideas from Gwynne’s powerful book. And, no, Gwynne, a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, wasn’t the inspiration for Billy Kyne.
Richard Henry Pratt’s autobiography Battlefield & Classroom, edited by Robert M. Utley (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), provided background on the Carlisle boarding school, as did The Indian Industrial School: Carlisle, Pennsylvania 1879–1918 by Linda F. Witmer (Cumberland County Historical Society, 1993). Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief by William T. Hagan (University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), and The Last Comanche Chief: The Life
and Times of Quanah Parker by Bill Neeley (John Wiley & Sons, 1995) were also frequently consulted.
The Eagle Park Trading Post near Cache, Oklahoma gave me an extended tour of Quanah’s Star House and the Wichita Mountains, and an excellent history lesson. The Star House could definitely use some restoration work, but it’s still standing, and the post deserves much praise for doing its best to keep this part of Comanche history alive.
Finally, I owe my Comanche friends (and Quanah Parker descendants) Nocona and Quanah Burgess, their father, Ronald “Chief Tachaco,” and their families many thanks for their help, support, friendship—and their amazing art.
Johnny D. Boggs
Santa Fe, New Mexico
About the Author
Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives—all in the name of finding a good story. He’s also one of the few Western writers to have won four Spur Awards from Western Writers of America (for his novels, Camp Ford, in 2006, Doubtful Cañon, in 2008, and Hard Winter in 2010, and his short story, “A Piano at Dead Man’s Crossing,” in 2002), and the Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (for his novel, Spark on the Prairie: The Trial of the Kiowa Chiefs, in 2004). A native of South Carolina, Boggs spent almost fifteen years in Texas as a journalist at the Dallas Times Herald and Fort Worth Star-Telegram before moving to New Mexico in 1998 to concentrate full time on his novels. Author of dozens of published short stories, he has also written for more than fifty newspapers and magazines, and is a frequent contributor to Boys’ Life, New Mexico Magazine, Persimmon Hill, and True West. His Western novels cover a wide range. The Lonesome Chisholm Trail (Five Star Westerns, 2000) is an authentic cattle-drive story, while Lonely Trumpet (Five Star Westerns, 2002) is an historical novel about the first black graduate of West Point. The Despoilers (Five Star Westerns, 2002) and Ghost Legion (Five Star Westerns, 2005) are set in the Carolina backcountry during the Revolutionary War. The Big Fifty (Five Star Westerns, 2003) chronicles the slaughter of buffalo on the southern plains in the 1870s, while East of the Border (Five Star Westerns, 2004) is a comedy about the theatrical offerings of Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Texas Jack Omohundro, and Camp Ford (Five Star Westerns, 2005) tells about a Civil War baseball game between Union prisoners of war and Confederate guards. “Boggs’s narrative voice captures the old-fashioned style of the past,” Publishers Weekly said, and Booklist called him “among the best Western writers at work today.” Boggs lives with his wife Lisa and son Jack in Santa Fe. His website is www.johnnydboggs.com.