by Lou Cameron
He said, “Nope. Just shady,” and went on to tell her about the white adventuress who’d taken advantage of a lovestuck drunken Indian, adding, “I doubt either one of us could get space rates on that angle. Most of our readers already know this world is infested with low lifes and those who don’t are hopeless. I don’t know how many times we’ve printed warnings about gold bricks and the suckers go right on buying ’em. I’ve about finished running my poor brain in the squirrel cage of BIA rules and regulation that don’t seem to agree with one another. I just saw a whole bookcase of the nonsense and somehow I don’t think my feature editor wants that long a feature on local color.”
She began to move a mite, teasingly, as she replied, “Mine, neither. How do you feel about chipping in with me for a nice private compartment on the train to the coast? I’d feel awkward doing this in daylight behind the drapes of a Pullman berth.”
He laughed up at her and said, “So would I. But who said anything about leaving for the coast right now?”
She said, “Me. We’ve got plenty of notes on the local color as well as the basic facts. Rude roughnecks keep whistling at me and shooting at you. So why don’t we quit while we’re ahead? You know neither of our papers are going to run more than four columns on Tulsa if the whole place blows up, and any writer worth his or her salt could do a full page on what we already have.”
He didn’t answer. Nothing seemed as important, at the time, than the heavy breathing she’d inspired on both their parts. And so, since she didn’t seem up to moving her parts all that fast, Stringer rolled her on her back, hooked an elbow under both her wide-spread dimpled knees and forgot about everything else in the universe for an all-too-short lovely time.
When it was over, Bubbles gasped, “Woosh! You sure come with a lot of energy. If the killers after you aren’t out to cover up Pearl Starr’s matrimonial agency, what’s left?”
He rolled off her, chuckling fondly, as he said, “I’ve heard of a nose for news, but you’re something else. I don’t even want to think about those Fort Smith fancy gals right now, you pretty little thing. Just let me get my second wind and I’ll show you a position I’ll bet you’ve never tried. Or would you rather save some for morning?”
She asked if they couldn’t do both. So they did. Sort of. When he woke up the next morning Stringer found himself alone in bed.
CHAPTER SIX
By the time he’d bathed, shaved and dressed himself, Stringer could tell by the street noises outside that he’d overslept a mite. It had to be pushing eight A.M. That no doubt accounted for Bubbles slipping back to her official room number, lest she be caught in the hall in broad daylight and a kimono with her hair unpinned. He considered giving her door a friendly pat on his way down to breakfast. But his boots were a bitch to slip off and on and he was hungry as a bitch wolf. So he decided to let sleeping gals lie, for now.
Downstairs, he found Irene, the pretty little breed, holding the fort alone behind the counter. The wall clock behind her told him it was a mite after eight, in fact. He didn’t ask. It was none of his beeswax, but Irene said, “I’m filling in for Mister Kelly ’til he gets here. I get off at eight this evening.”
He nodded and said, “Remind me not to wait that long if I have any more long-distance calls to make. I hope your day-shift clerk shows up soon, so’s you can at least get to sit down for twelve hours.”
She shrugged and said, “Oh, I don’t mind leaping from desk to switchboard. It’s sort of interesting. It’s after I get off at night that vexes me. I don’t have any friends up here in Tulsa, and, of course, I have to go straight home, having no escort. There’s a new picture show from France playing just down the street, too. They say a mess of French gals dance the can-can in it, bold as brass, too. I’d surely like to see a picture show like that. Wouldn’t you?”
He smiled thinly and replied, “Right now I’d rather see a plate of ham and eggs and at least two mugs of coffee. I don’t suppose you know a place where I could stuff my fool face?”
She lowered her long lashes as she murmured, “Not until I get off work, if you’re talking about really fine home cooking. But you might try the cafe between here and the depot, on this side of the street.”
He thanked her and was about to leave. Then he considered the feelings of Bubbles, if she ever woke up, and asked Irene if he could leave a note in the key box of that other member of the Fourth Estate, W.R. Hackman.
Irene shook her head and said, “Miss Hackman’s gone. She checked out just a few minutes ago, bag and baggage.”
Stringer frowned and said, “That’s odd. She never mentioned moving when we, ah, met at a press conference yesterday. Did she say where she was headed?”
Irene told him, “Not in so many words. But she did say something about the 8:45 westbound. You could likely still catch up with her at the depot if it’s important.”
Stringer considered. Then he grinned and said, “I can’t think of anything important we could accomplish in such short a time in a railroad waiting room. I’d best go see about those eggs aboard fried ham. I hope your room clerk shows up soon, Miss Irene.”
She placed one finger along the side of her nose and winked at him as she confided, “He won’t. She’s very pretty.”
Stringer laughed, ticked his hat brim at her, and left in search of the cafe she’d told him about.
It wasn’t much. There were only four tables and all four were occupied. He was about to turn away when he heard his name called from a comer table and saw the two gents seated at it were Bull Durham and Tiger Twain, of all people. It was Durham who waved him over to a vacant bentwood chair. Tiger was just staring at him, thoughtfully. As Durham introduced Stringer to the driller he’d yet to meet formally, Tiger ignored the hand Stringer held out and said, “We’ve rubbed noses in the past. Wasn’t it you I saw whispering with Lawyer Lacey just before the son of a bitch had me fired?”
Stringer sat down as he replied, easily, “I don’t recall whispering about anything, Tiger. I asked him for a ride back to town, loud and clear. That was before you blew the top of that hill, I’ll thank you to recall. So kindly leave me out of your feud with Sinclair Oil, and how does a man get some breakfast in this joint?”
Bull Durham bellowed for the colored waiter, who came over wary-eyed to take Stringer’s order. As he headed back to the kitchen Durham turned back to Stringer and said, “I hope we ain’t at feud neither, old son. I was forced to tell the law who was in the Pronghorn, yesterday, when that fight broke out in the back. I did say I was sure you had nothing to do with it, though.”
Stringer nodded and replied, “I told Chris Madsen the same tale when he caught up with me last night. I failed to mention you to him. But every man does what he thinks he ought to, and since neither of us could have gunned that Indian agent, what the hell.”
Bull Durham looked relieved and made small talk with Tiger until the waiter brought Stringer’s ham and eggs. As he dug in he only half listened to the conversation. It was sort of dull. The friendly but foolishly windy Durham kept suggesting outfits Tiger might be able to hire on with. Stringer knew as well as Tiger that a straw boss who’d been fired for carelessly blowing up an oil well would have a tougher time than their colored waiter getting any kind of job in Tulsa right now. Stringer considered suggesting Tiger change his name for business reasons before moving on. Then it occurred to him that Twain had to be a made-up name and that the sullen cuss no doubt had to come up with a new name everywhere he drifted with his brag and fake references. So as he washed down the last of the ham and eggs with black coffee, Stringer tried to change the subject by saying, “I have to look up an Osage called Walter Bluefeather. I don’t suppose either of you gents might know him?”
Tiger just scowled. Bull Durham said, “I know of him. He’s a bad Injun. Uses his seat on the tribal council to scalp his fellow redskins head to toe. Drives into town in a big white Stanley steamer, showing off.”
Stringer said, “Not no more. He says he�
�s in the market for a gas buggy. Do you know the way to his spread, the Rocking Tipi?”
Durham frowned and said, “Sort of. It’s about six or eight miles out to the north-west, on the Osage reserve. Look for the Pawhuska Post Road and follow it „til you come to a spread too fancy for any damned Indian and, oh, yeah, there’s a pipe line alongside the road and you’ll see some oil derricks just this side of Bluefeathers’. A wildcatter called Tex Roberts sunk ’em just inside that fool Indian’s property line.”
Stringer sipped some more coffee before he asked, casually, “Do tell? That’s odd. I heard it straight from Bluefeather that he does business with Standard Oil.”
Bull Durham nodded and explained, “He does now. I just told you Roberts is a wildcatter. Old John D. ain’t one for taking risks with his own money. That’s likely why he has so much of the same. Gents like Tex Roberts enjoy the fun and occasional profit of drilling where nobody’s ever drilled afore. One hell of a heap of holes turn out dry. Do a wildcatter get lucky and bring in a producing well, the big boys buy him out, see?”
Stringer asked, “What if they don’t want to sell?” To which Durham replied with a weary smile, “They always do. They don’t have much choice. It lakes a heap of money to sink any kind of well and the wildcatters are always in debt for the dry ones they sink most often. Your financial obligations are just starting when you do strike oil. Nobody’s about to buy a drop of crude in the middle of nowhere. It has to be piped to a refinery, through expensive pipe lines. Once it gets there, the oil trust owns all the refineries and railroad tank cars, in any case. So it’s best for everyone to just sell the fool well for a heap of cash and move on, letting the big boys worry about getting it to market, see?”
Stringer nodded and said, “I do now. I assume the oil trust has to buy the oil leases the wildcatters have had to get from the property owners to begin with?”
Bull Durham shrugged and said, “I reckon. I’ve never worried about such paper work. I’m an oil man, not a flimflam man.”
Tiger Twain growled, “You sure do talk a lot for any sort of working man,” as he rose to his feet, adding, “I need some fresh air, it stinks in here,” before turning from them to stalk out, muttering to himself.
Stringer smiled thinly and said, “I wonder if that parting shot was meant for you or me,” to which the friendlier oil man replied, “Don’t ask him, even if you catch up with him again before he leaves town. He’s one tough hairpin with an uncertain disposition. I do like to talk, so it might have been me, and I just feel sorry for him.”
Stringer asked why it might have been himself. So Durham sighed and said, “He does seem to feel you put in a bad word for him with Lawyer Lacey. I tried to tell him I’d have fired him, myself, if he’d blown any oil rig I owned to kindling wood and then set fire to it. But you might have noticed he don’t take me serious. He knows I’m just another working stiff, like him. He’s really got it in for what he calls the capital class. He reads a lot of that socialist shit put out by gents like Jack London.”
Stringer laughed and said, “I can’t wait to tell old Jack I’m a capitalist. He’s not a socialist any more, by the way. Since he published Call Of The Wild he’s been smoking fifty cent cigars and bitching about paying taxes to support all the lazy bums who just don’t want to work.”
Then he got up, left a dime on the table, and headed for the cashier to pay up and be on his way to visit an Osage capitalist he knew of.
Stringer hired a retired army bay and a center-fire stock saddle at the nearest livery. One of the stable hands was an Osage who gave him even clearer directions to the Rocking Tipi. He didn’t seem to be sore at Walter Bluefeather for being a mite richer than he was.
As Stringer rode out of the forest of oil derricks around Tulsa he saw that, sure enough, a six-inch pipe ran along the ditch beside the prairie wagon trace to the Osage capital at Pawhuska. It lay mostly sun-baked in this kind of weather, save for where it lay half submerged in oily water along the bottom of a draw. The dry sea of grass all around was sort of wavy and, once he was out of town a ways the draws were timbered with cottonwood, crack willow and wild chokecherry. The rises were not only grassy but overgrazed. He knew the Osage had been quicker to grasp the advantages of raising beef instead of hunting it than their Sioux cousins to the north. They seemed to be overdoing it on this range. But white stockmen tended to be just as bad at overstocking their range. So what the hell.
He spied the grove of oil derricks ahead and to his left long before he could get close enough to them to matter. When at last he came to the first one, he heard what sounded like the sneaky sounds of life coming from the bitty shack next to the gummed up drilling platform and reined in to call out a howdy.
There was no answer. He rode closer and laughed at himself when he realized there was nobody there but the whispering steam engine that was pumping the well. He had better luck at finding signs of life when he topped the rise beyond to rein in and admire the mighty fancy homestead facing him on the far slope. The main ranchhouse rambled along the sunward slope in a manner to do any cattle baron proud. Neither the barn or attached outbuildings were anything to sneeze at, either. The only indication that the owner might be Indian was the lack of paint or whitewash on the sun-silvered planks and shingles. Stringer had no idea why Plains Indians simply refused to paint wood. He just accepted it as a notion they had as much right to as the Mexicans did blue window-shutters or his own kind’s habit of growing inedible posies out front.
A whole mess of folk were seated at a trestle table in the door yard, oblivious of the glaring sun that was still on its way up in the cloudless cobalt sky. As Stringer rode in, a couple of fox-faced cur-dogs with tails to match came at him and his mount, barking threats of sure death, until a tall familiar figure rose from the table and yelled at them in Osage. That stopped the dogs in their tracks and made them head the other way, tails between their legs. Stringer admired a dog owner who didn’t allow his property to act like spoiled brats. As Stringer rode closer Walter Bluefeather waved him on in and called out, “You’re just in time, Paleface. We’re fixing to have us some ice cream.”
As Stringer dismounted a young Osage ranch hand ran over to grab his reins and lead the bay to shade and water. The Osage seated around the table seemed made of sterner stuff. They paid no attention to the cloud of hover flies above the table, either. As Bluefeather introduced Stringer to his kith and kin they turned out to be a mixed bag of men, women and children, including the ones who’d tried to run their uncle’s Stanley steamer into the river the day before. Some of the gals were handsome and a couple looked at least half white. Stringer saw no sign of the white wife and in-laws Bluefeather was said to have. There was a milk bucket-sized ice cream maker on the table. As Stringer sat down with them, Bluefeather told him, “It’s your turn to crank, MacKail. I don’t know why the fool thing is taking so long this morning. I ordered me the best brand from Monkey Ward and we done ever’thing the instructions said. But she just won’t go.”
Stringer leaned foreward to give the crank on top an experimental turn. Then he said, “You’re right. The makings feel thin as buttermilk. You’re sure you have plenty of cracked ice and rock salt around the inner liner?”
Bluefeather frowned and said, “Sure we got ice in her. Do you take me for a noble savage? Run that part about rock salt past me again.”
Stringer explained, “You’re supposed to mix rock salt with the cracked ice. It makes the ice melt faster and that draws heat from your ice cream mix, see?”
Bluefeather laughed and said, “Well, I never. Somebody ran in the house and ask the cook for a measure of rock salt.” So six kids and four grown men jumped up to dash for the nearby house. Stringer knew kids were just like that. Rich men of any breed always had ass kissers hanging about.
As they waited for the rock salt Walter Bluefeather handed Stringer a Havana Claro and asked what might have brought him out this way, aside from a passion for home-made ice cream.
Bluefeather laughed and said, “Yeah, I wish I’d been there. Creek don’t know the value of money. All they want is yaller shoes and a bottle of gin. They already got more oil wells than they need and what might a Creek graveyard have to do with the Osage council?”
Stringer said, “Nothing, direct. I was hoping you could fill me in on the difference between tribal land held in trust to the council and privately owned Indian land, like your own.”
Bluefeather thumbnailed a kitchen match and lit the cigar for Stringer as he said, “That’s easy. The original notion of the Great White Pappa was that each nation would get a chunk of the Indian Nation, held in common, the area depending on the head-count of the folk involved.”
He shook the match out and continued, “At the same time they were trying to get us all to live white, offering us seeds, tools, scholarships to Carlisle College back East and so on. We went along with ’em, having no choice when even we could see there was just no way to live on so little hunting range the old ways. One farm can feed thirty families or more whilst a hunting band of say thirty needs at least a couple of hundred square miles of such dry country.”
Stringer shot an admiring glance around as he said, “I can see you Osage were quick learners.” To which Bluefeather replied with a nod, “Like I said, we had to be. One of the first things we learned was that old Karl Marx was full of it. You just can’t work land communal. A family has to own land before they’ll work it enough to matter. So after a while, the BIA changed the rules, they do that a lot, and allotted a section or quarter section to each family head, depending on whether he wanted to graze it or plow it. Us Osage opted mostly for grazing stock. Cherokee like farming better than we ever did. But in the end, there was land left over because the damned BIA would only give clear title to so much land to one family, see?”