Panhandle

by Brett Cogburn

  Folks were naturally curious to see what kind of horse we had brought. They all stopped to gather in small groups to visit. Little Paint was still a touch on the wild side, and he spooked back on the end of his lead rope several times as the crowd pressed close. Billy had Carlito take a position alongside the horse to act as a guard. He was there to ward off the kids who threatened to run under Little Paint’s belly, the women who would offer him sweets, and those who just naturally wanted to touch what they had come to see.

  I wondered if we shouldn’t have kept the horse back away from the crowd, and kept him as quiet and stress free as possible. Billy had considered that earlier, but decided that this might give the animal time to acclimate to things before the race. Besides that, we doubted if we could avoid a crowd around our camp anyway.

  Billy soon strode off to find Colonel Andrews and lay out the race course. Andy and most of our crowd had followed H.B. over to look at Baby, and Carlito assured me he had things under control. Our Mexican cook was about half bandit, and he patted the pistol and knife at his belt. I figured Little Paint was safe enough.

  It was still a good three hours before the race was to be run, and with time to kill I wandered my way along through the crowd to see who I could see.

  Just past the colonel’s tent somebody had set up a refreshment stand. A wagon tarp was laid over a rope between two trees, and staked at the ground on either side, forming a tent. A large wagon was parked at the back opening, thus blocking admittance from that side, and the front opening was blocked by a plank laid over a couple of wooden kegs. This makeshift bar lay just far enough back into the tarp roof to allow customers at the bar a narrow strip of shade.

  I made my way up to the bar, and it was already doing enough business at that time of the morning that I had to wait for a gap at the plank to appear. Two men and a woman were tending drinks, and they had to hoof it to keep up with the orders. It seemed like there were a lot of gentlemen set on getting the morning off to a good start.

  I tossed down a half-dollar whiskey, and then bought a beer, which cost me another fifteen cents. I took my beer and continued to walk down through the camp. Just past the tent bar they had a long mess table set up, and every chair was full. Behind the table they had a barbecue pit and the smell of smoky beef filled the air. I wondered whose beef it was, but it was like an old Texas cowman once told me. The best eating beef always belonged to someone else.

  Nursing the lukewarm beer I ambled my way along, greeting many I didn’t know, and stopping from time to time to visit with some old acquaintance. I looked back over my shoulder and observed two young boys following in my wake. I stopped and they stopped. They stared at me intently, as if expecting something of me.

  “What do you two want?”

  The boldest of the lot said, “Your bottle. That barman is giving a penny for every bottle we find for him.”

  I stared them down a bit, and one of the boys lowered his head and went to digging at the ground with one bare foot. The bottle was just about empty, and rapidly losing what little cool and refreshing qualities it once had. I turned it up and drained the last of it, and then tossed the bottle over the top of the boys’ heads and out into the grass.

  They whirled in an instant and dashed for the bottle. I was reminded of stepping out of the door of a house with a plate load of table scraps for the hounds. Both of the boys spied the bottle at the same time, and those two kids went after it root-hog-or-die. They rolled around in the grass, and a punch or two was thrown before the bigger of the boys jumped to his feet and took off in a run with the bottle waving proudly in his grasp. The smaller boy raced at his heels, matching every turn as the other sought to dodge and evade him. They zigzagged away like a pair of mad hornets.

  “Boys will be boys,” a deep voice sounded behind me.

  I turned around, and who should I see but Long Tom standing there with a smile on his face. He was looking a lot more prosperous than the last time I saw him. A new felt hat, not even yet broken in, sat atop his head. He wore a white shirt tucked into duck pants held up by suspenders, and a pair of tall topped boots with long, flapping mule ear tugs.

  “Looks like times are changing,” I said, and offered my hand.

  “Slowly, slowly.”

  “How’s the freighting business?”

  “Better than I’d hoped.”

  We took us a walk to catch each other up on what had been happening during the past summer. It seemed like Long had latched on to a good deal. He was then running not one wagon, but three. He had his original wagon and three yoke of oxen, and had purchased another large wagon about the same. He had also acquired a smaller wagon with four big mules to pull it. The ox rigs could handle about four thousand pounds of freight apiece, and the mule rig between two and three thousand.

  “Sounds like you have been doing real good and real quick.”

  “There’s a lot of business, and the money’s good, but not that good. I’ve been busy, and a banker up at Caldwell offered to loan me some money to, what he called, ‘expand my operations.’ ” Long hooked his thumbs in his suspenders and rocked back on his heels as he was speaking.

  “You’re going to get rich if you ain’t careful.”

  Long smiled even bigger and took me by the shoulder to tell me about his business as we walked along. “My freighting business ain’t all that I’ve been expanding.”

  There was a cousin of his back in the Chickasaw Nation who, it seems, was equally talented where the making of whiskey was concerned. Long was hauling some government supplies periodically down to Ft. Reno, and as of late he’d been going on down into the Chickasaw Nation to load out corn. The hiding of a few boxes of whiskey in a load of ear corn was a simple matter.

  There were a lot of Indians who dearly loved to get hold of a little of Satan’s Tonic, and a growing number of cowboys filling the Cherokee Strip and other parts of the Territory who approached the stuff with equal enthusiasm. It seemed that Long had the business acumen, the good sense, and the moral depravity to take advantage of such a ready and lucrative market.

  He was picking up most of his freight out of Kansas and covering a big swath of country. His deliveries covered several of the various forts and Indian agencies in the Territory, and many ranches in the Texas Panhandle. The trade in whiskey was strictly prohibited in the Indian Territory, but that made for a good market. There is nothing like a little illegality to create demand.

  As I later learned from Long, there were a few rules to operate by when you were peddling whiskey. The first one was to be on the lookout for John Law. The government was hell bent and set on keeping liquor away from the Indians, and probably just as set on collecting taxes on liquor made and sold to its citizens. A man had to keep on the lookout for tribal Light Horse, Federal Deputy Marshals, and even the U.S. Army at times. The only thing that stopped a man from peddling a little whiskey in the Indian Territory was the law, and there were too few of its representatives working a whole lot of country.

  Second, a man always collected his money before the goods were handed over, and you never gave more than a sip for a sample, or you would soon have more friends than you had liquor.

  Third, and last, you never stayed around too long after selling Indians a bunch of whiskey. Given their warlike nature, and the fact that, to white men, they were considerably unpredictable at best, they were liable to get drunk enough to scalp you and take the rest of your makings.

  Some might think that it was prejudicial to suppose that liquor had any worse of an effect on the Indians as a whole than it did on white folks, but it was the truth. I’ve heard people talk about how we whipped the Indians by killing their buffalo, and the Army burning out their winter camps. To my way of thinking, formed by a life lived in that time and country, we whipped them because we brought three things that the Indians were lacking—smallpox, lawyers, and whiskey.

  We continued our rounds while Long questioned me thoroughly about Billy, Andy, and myself. I filled h
im in as best I could, and he was especially curious when I got to the part about our racehorse.

  “Are you boys the ones that are going to run against Colonel Andrews’s horse?”

  And when I nodded in affirmation he asked, “That little old pinto of Billy’s is your racehorse?”

  I again confirmed, and he shook his head and whistled in disbelief. “Is he fast, sure enough?”

  “You ain’t the only one that’s come into good fortune.”

  “Y’all had better watch your money. Do you know this Colonel Andrews?”

  “We’ve met him.”

  “But you don’t know him.”

  “We ain’t foolish enough to believe he ain’t a professional if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “He’s sure enough a professional. You had better be careful not to bet all you’ve got with that man and expect to win.”

  “How is it that you know him?”

  “I met him coming up the trail a week ago and sold him some whiskey.”

  “And you know all about him now?” Long was trying to rain on our parade, and it was making me a little testy.

  “No. I was just starting my story and you interrupted.”

  “Go ahead then.”

  “I’d already heard about the colonel a long time back. It seems like your bunch is the only ones that don’t know about him.” Long flopped down in the grass and picked a stem to play around with in his mouth while he talked. I could tell I was in for a story and sat down with him.

  To hear Long tell it, Colonel Andrews was darned near famous for his sporting ways from the Gulf to Denver. He traveled the roads and trails of the West dragging a team of racehorses, fighting roosters, a few pit dogs, and even a foot racer from time to time. He was a high-stakes man and there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t bet on, and even less that he hadn’t won money on.

  “All I’m going to say is you boys had better be careful with your money,” Long cautioned.

  “You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of our good senses, or our judgment, where horses and character are concerned, do you?”

  “I’ve had more practice than you. White folks like him have been skinning me since I was knee high to a mule. When you’re black you learn that white people don’t make any attempt to cover up the fact that their only aim is to get something out of you, and no more. It’s just natural that over the years I’ve come to know their look.”

  Long paused to adjust his grass stem and then continued, “He’s one of those Southern boys who don’t know nothing about nothing except for riding horses, playing cards, beating niggers, and sipping fancy liquor. He’d shoot you over nothing, while he read his paper and talked about the price of cotton, and he wouldn’t miss. He was raised in white diapers, and his mama told him he was the best thing since grits. He came naturally to assume he was better than most folks, and he’s on the lookout to take advantage of that. All the while he is smiling at you, he is figuring on just how smart you are and how much he could take you for.”

  “You seem to know a lot about your fellow man,” I said sarcastically.

  “I ought to. One of those just like him was my daddy.”

  Long looked at me close and hard for a long minute. I met him eye to eye and waited until he smiled.

  “Well, at least half of you is all right,” I said.

  “Which half?”

  “The half that can make good whiskey.”

  Long jumped abruptly to his feet and motioned me up. He wanted to see Billy and Andy and take a look at our racehorse. I led the way toward our wagon.

  Somebody rode by at a run screaming like the world was on fire. “Indians! Indians are coming!”

  The crowd stampeded over me and like to have trampled me to death. In three shakes of a hound’s tail everyone was gathered up tight around the tent saloon like freighters circling their wagons and throwing their oxen to the inside.

  There were enough gun barrels sticking out of the crowd to have fought Gettysburg all over again. Some officer had formed up the black soldiers into a firing line with their Springfield rifles loaded and ready. Long and I rounded up a little girl we found crying and alone. We brought her along until we had joined the group, and set her down with her daddy. In the rush to protect the saloon I guess she had been forgotten.

  All eyes were looking to the east, and sure enough a long line of Cheyennes was pouring over the top of a rise toward our camp. I guarantee you it was some sight to see. They were dragging their tepees and travois behind their ponies, and every one of them was decked out in their best outfits. Strung beads and feathers blew in the wind and the sunshine made the white buckskin a few of them wore all the brighter.

  There must have been a hundred of them, squaws, children, warriors, and all. Their camp moved to some age-old migratory rhythm set to the time of their ponies’ shuffling hooves and the creak of travois poles. The people laughed and the camp dogs yapped and ran in and out of their midst. The braves, half-naked and armed to the teeth, rode at the perimeter of the tribe for security. A good-sized herd of grass-slick horses was driven alongside the line of their march by a gang of rowdy boys.

  And wouldn’t you know it. Old Chief Blue Knife was riding at the head of the procession. He sat straight on the back of his horse, a long, wickedly sharp lance in his right hand, and a brace of pistols in his beaded belt. It wasn’t feathers blowing around him, but instead it was several human scalps tied to the bridle reins of his horse.

  When he neared, his face was a mask of stoicism, and his eyes were like to chunks of coal. If I was right, our location on the creek was south of the Cheyenne Reservation, but they might not draw the same boundaries. Nobody knew if Blue Knife came to burn us out or shake our hands. In his younger day he was known to be a temperamental sort just as apt to befriend you as he was to cut your heart out and feed it to his dogs.

  I couldn’t help feeling that he looked to be on the prod, and I was remembering a few things I would have liked to have forgotten just then. I swear I could feel every individual hair on my head tingling as I remembered three damned fools who had stolen some Cheyenne horses the spring before, and most of them belonging to a certain chief named Blue Knife.

  Just when you think things can’t get any worse is just when they are bound to. Long poked me in the ribs to get my attention. “There’s one more thing I forgot to tell you. You remember old Harvey? He was the man you traded those Cheyenne horses to.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He and the colonel are brothers.”

  I thought that it was a small, small world indeed when in the course of one day a man ran into so many folks apt to kill him.

  “I saw him this morning,” Long added.

  “Who?”

  “Harvey.”

  “He’s here?” I couldn’t help but look around.

  “He is, and he was looking for Billy and some other boys with a paint racehorse. Seems he had a near miss with some Cheyenne who caught him with stolen horses.”

  I am not the nervous type, and have at times taken great pride in my feats of daring. However, right about then I must admit to being a bit overwhelmed, and more than a little disturbed by the fact that I was either about to be shot by a disgruntled horse trader and his gambler brother, or scalped by a tribe of Red Indians.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Cheyenne uprising was put down before it even began. Chief Blue Knife stopped his bunch about forty yards out from us. He sat his horse patiently, and didn’t have long to wait. Cap Arrington stepped from the crowd and walked out to talk to him, or shoot him with his long-barreled forty-five should it become necessary. It seems that the good people of the newly formed Wheeler County had elected the Ranger as their first sheriff. I guessed that dealing single-handedly with a hundred bloodthirsty savages must have fallen within his official duties.

  The captain jawed a while with the old chief and then came back and had a conference with the military officers. When that was over he marched right
back out to Blue Knife and they talked some more. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it must have been agreeable to Cap because he didn’t shoot anybody.

  Blue Knife turned his pony around and rode back to powwow with some of his warriors. After a meeting of the aboriginal minds, the whole band of Indians started off again, angling for a point farther upstream. I was thinking that perhaps Cap Arrington’s wicked mustache and long-barreled Colt pistol weren’t enough to turn the Cheyenne back to their reservation, and he had to settle for detouring them around us as a matter of saving face.

  Everyone continued to watch the Cheyenne almost hypnotically while they paraded by. A murmur went up from our crowd when the Indians stopped and started pitching camp on the north bank of the Sweetwater about a hundred and fifty yards upstream from the race grounds. Our group began to get a little loud and anxious, while the Army troops mingled around informing everyone that the Indians were here to take part in the festivities, and had promised not to steal any white women or scalp anybody out of hand.

  That quieted the cool and calm types, but there was quite a little uproar from the scared-shitless-of-Indians faction within our midst. Cap Arrington waded among those still gathered, and informed them that our camp sat astraddle of the boundary between Greer County and the Cheyenne Reservation. Not only were we trespassing, but we were introducing whiskey and gambling on to Indian lands. After he had listed the hundred and one laws we were breaking, he then subtly suggested that we all just try to get along with our new friends.

  A lot of folks formerly prejudiced to Indians were converted on the spot. Having to choose between playing well with others and leaving the party before things got started, most everyone became instant Indian lovers, humanitarian philanthropists, and activists for the red man’s cause.