by Lou Cameron
Bull Durham had never driven this particular make, but all automobiles seemed to work much the same. He set the choke lever and made sure the brakes were locked. The gas pedal one used on the road was useless until you got the motor turning over, so there was a hand throttle to take care of that. He made sure the gears were in neutral. Then he climbed out and walked around to bend over and give the hand crank a good twist.
Nothing happened. Not even a cough from the infernal, and no doubt, cold engine. Bull Durham tried again, putting his back into it, this time, and still the muley son of a bitch refused to even backfire.
Durham swore, nibbed his sweaty palms dry on his pants, and got set to try again. Then Stringer told him, in a conversational tone from his stakeout in the shadows across the way, “It’s no use, Bull. I disconnected the magneto wires a time back, and I sure hope you see the advantages of putting both your hands flat on the hood, right now.”
Bull Durham must not have. He dropped to one knee and drew his own gun as he spun to face Stringer. Stringer fired and blew the crooked pipe fitter’s brains out the back of his skull.
As the body lay limp as a stomped snake in the dust, with one foot twitching a mite, Stringer stepped out of the shadows, muttering, “Aw, you shouldn’t have done that, you asshole. I wanted to talk to you about your crooked ways.”
Bull Durham didn’t answer. His one boot had even stopped twitching as Stringer hunkered over him to strike a match and mutter, “Damn, I fired higher than I aimed. It sure is tough to get the details out of gents like you and old Walter, thanks to your hasty habits.”
Then he shook out the match and got up to stand to one side as he heard windows and doors popping open up and down the alley. Someone came to a backyard fence to see what they could in the flickering, uncertain light, and a she-male voice demanded to know what was going on. Stringer called back, “It’s over for now, Ma’am. The law probably heard it too, and ought to be here any time, now.”
The inquisitive woman called back, “Is that you, Stuart?” and so he replied, “It sure is, Miss Helen Tenkiller? I thought I recognized your voice, too. You live around here?”
She laughed uncertainly and said, “Why, no, I was only out strolling in the dark, without an escort. I thought you were going to escort me home after work, Stuart.”
He said, “Something else came up. Don’t come no closer. I just put one of them crooks we were talking about down, here. I was hoping to get more out of him when I spotted Walter Bluefeather’s horseless carriage in this alley and suspected that as he had no further use for it, someone else might.”
He only got to explain a little more when they were joined in force by Deputy U.S. Marshal Tilghman and a modest posse of lesser lawmen. When Tilghman demanded an explanation for the discharge of firearms within the city limits, Stringer identified himself and added, “Hold on. I’ll shed more light on the subject.”
Bill Tilghman and his boys were made of sterner stuff, but little Helen gasped and said, “Oh, how dreadful!” once Stringer had the Buick’s brass headlamps gleaming on Bull Durham’s body and scattered brains. Tilghman nodded and said, “Good thinking, Stringer. That would be Bluefeather’s gas buggy, right?”
Stringer nodded and holstered his reloaded .38 as he replied, “Old Bull must have been planning on going somewhere sudden. When I noticed it wasn’t parked near the Pronghorn as usual, I started looking for it. I didn’t see how Bluefeather could have driven home this evening. I tried to take Durham alive. As you can see, I failed. He must have had more on his conscience than I figured. He couldn’t have been the mastermind behind all this disgusting business.”
Tilghman sighed and said, “Dang it, Stringer, I still don’t have a clear picture of what’s been going on, let alone who’s been masterminding it. You lit out on us again right after you said Walter Bluefeather had taken advantage of his position on the tribal council to crook other oil well Indians. I don’t want to wait until I read about it in your infernal Frisco Sun. I’d like a full explanation here and now!”
Stringer nodded soberly and said, “Here and now is sort of grim and there’s some chill in the air as well as no place to sit down.” Then he turned to the pretty part-Cherokee peering over the fence at them and added, “Do you reckon we could talk things over in your kitchen, Miss Helen, seeing you’re still fully dressed and might be interested as well, working for the BIA and all?”
She allowed she’d even be proud to coffee and cake them. So Bill Tilghman told his junior lawmen to mind Durham’s remains until the meat wagon arrived and to impound the horseless carriage while they were at it. Then Helen opened her back gate and led Stringer and Tilghman across her yard and up her kitchen steps.
Tilghman said she had a nice place here as he and Stringer took off their hats and sat down at the kitchen table. Helen thanked him and lit her fancy new gas range to make coffee before she joined them at table, saying, “It should be ready in just a few minutes. Now, what was that about my office being interested in those awful men, Stuart. I’m all ears.”
Stringer smiled at her and said, “The rest of you ain’t bad, neither. Beginning at the beginning, we all know oil was struck here and, even burning away most of it, there’s still enough gas to cook with local. So Tulsa has been growing by leaps and bounds with almost everyone getting prosperous, too fast to keep track of. It might have been simpler if your BIA didn’t have so many complicated regulations about Indians that suddenly had so much oil to sell, no offense, but that’s the way things turned out, with hardly anyone having a grasp of the whole picture. The oil trust was playing with its cards close to its vest. The wildcatters have always been even more secretive. So as wells and pipe lines got all tangled up, the real brains behind Bluefeather, Durham and others saw the chance to skim some cream. Nobody else was likely to notice, since everyone was getting more milk than they’d ever expected.”
Tilghman said, “Back up, Stringer. Right after you blowed up Bluefeather you told us he’d been crooking the other Osage with sneaky pipe lines.”
Stringer nodded and said, “It was Durham, out back, who laid the lines as a licensed pipe fitter nobody saw fit to question. He subcontracted to the wildcatter, Tex Roberts, who’d drilled on the Osage reserve and just wanted to get paid off and git. He might or might not have seen Durham and his pickup crew of ignorant hands put in the main trunk lines before Standard Oil bought the whole field out. All the oil trust had to worry about was the oil flowing in for them to refine and ship. They didn’t pay for any oil they never run through a meter. If they noticed their blue prints of Durham’s layout seemed a mite more spiderwebby than they might have done it, they had no reason to care. They hadn’t done it. They didn’t care how much pipe a small-time handy man used to get the results a less confused engineer might have. Do you mind if I smoke, Miss Helen? My mouth is sort of dry from all this talking.”
She told him to go ahead and the coffee was almost ready as Bill Tilghman swore under his breath and said, “Get to the infernal point. How were Durham and that Indian swindling the other Osage?”
Stringer got out the makings and proceeded to build himself a smoke at the table as he explained, “Oh, that was easy, once I noticed how some wells leased by more honest Osage seemed to have more than one pipe line connected to ’em. Like I said, it looked sort of like a big old spiderweb. With some skinny white lines connecting crossways to the main trunk running in from old Walter’s wells. To any Osage riding after cows out there, the needless pipes running who-knows-where would have looked like some other white man’s notion. Few cow hands, red or white, care about pipe lines, telephone poles and such, as long as they don’t seem to be in his way. Anyone who did have questions could just ask the tribal council and, being good old Walter was the member who served swell ice cream and knew all about dealing with the oil trust…”
Tilghman whistled and said, “Pretty slick. They let all the other oil well Indians get regular payments for at least some of the crude under the
ir own property while Bluefeather’s metered trunk line delivered the lion’s share! It’s no wonder he could afford to discard Stanley Steamers like smoked-down cigar butts! Yet, all the time, the neighbors he was robbing were getting enough to be pleased, even if he hadn’t been the one trusted tribal official they’d naturally turn to if they suspected one penny of their oil money was lost strayed or stolen!”
Helen got up to fetch the coffee and cake as she gushed, “That must have been what poor Mister Davis had caught on to, just before they killed him, right?”
Stringer sealed his smoke and lit it before he told her and Tilghman, “Not hardly. Davis was an Indian agent, not an oil field expert. I’d say he was looking into the way so many Indians were suddenly sprouting white in-laws for sponsors. Had they let him live, he might not have uncovered anything everyone else in the territory didn’t know. The Oklahoma Indian tribes seem to be as able to take care of themselves in a business deal as, say, your average immigrant homesteader. But his snooping must have made the mastermind nervous. Folks with guilty consciences tend to strike like snakes instead of waiting to find out if they’ve been caught.”
He took a thoughtful drag on his neatly rolled cigarette and added, “It’s a funny thing. Right not I’d be filing a report on that big fire just outside of town, or even on my way home, if said mastermind had just kept cool. I was never sent here to pester Standard Oil about blue prints. I doubt poor old Davis could have gotten them to show any to him. So I’d say his murder was dumb as well as dirty.”
Bill Tilghman growled, “Sinclair Oil has that runaway well on the run with the wagon loads of wet mud they’ve been hauling out of the Arkansas all day. The dumb brute who done that deed is in jail right now. Who do I get to arrest as the mastermind of that more serious matter? Lawyer Lacey, the one as set things up so’s Bluefeather could peddle his and everyone else’s Indian oil?”
Stringer didn’t answer as Helen Tenkiller placed empty cups and saucers in front of the two of them. As she moved away from the table again Stringer shook his head and said, “Jim Lacey is just a lawyer, making him as dirty dealing a rascal as any other lawyer, but I’d say he was too dumb as well as dirty to have come up with such a tricky plan. Lacey’s just a small town lawyer willing to marry his sister off just to make a buck, and while she’s mighty sneaky about some things, she failed to strike me as all that smart. She just got out here from the east and can’t know much about the cow business, let alone the oil business. Once Bluefeather had been recruited to go along with a slick scheme, I can’t see him ever coming up with on his own, either, he had to have a white sponsor to peddle his own and other Indian’s oil. He might well have married Victoria Lacey in name only, fair and square, before he was approached by the real slicker. You can look all that up, later. I doubt it will ever matter, now that Lacey has lost a client and his sister is a widow.”
Helen placed a generous slab of fudge cake before each of them and began to pour their coffee as she asked, with a puzzled frown, “Won’t being Walter Bluefeather’s widow put this horrid white woman in line for all that oil money, Stuart?”
Stringer smiled across the table to ask Tilghman, “Do you want to tell her, Bill?” So the older lawman explained, rather pompously, “Not hardly, little lady. Nobody gets to inherit ill-gotten gains, even when the Osage Nation isn’t mighty interested in ’em. If the Laceys have a lick of sense, they won’t try to put in for a nickel of Indian money. Ain’t you fixing to join us, Ma’am?”
Helen shook her head and sat down again, saying, “I just ate, and even if I hadn’t all this excitement has my tummy full of butterflies.”
Then she turned back to Stringer to ask, “Who do you think could be behind all this excitement, Stuart?”
Stringer shot a warning look at Tilghman, who’d just picked up his coffee cup, and said, “I wouldn’t drink that if I were you, Bill. I know it sounds mighty wild, but she did have her boss murdered for less reason, you know.”
There was a moment of silence you could cut with a knife, then Tilghman slowly put his cup down, untasted, and said softly, “I sure hope you know what you’re talking about, old son,” and, before Stringer could reply, Helen Tenkiller sobbed, “You must be crazy, drunk, or both!” as she started to rise from the table.
Bill Tilghman said, quietly, “Sit down and stay set, Ma’am. I mean that, even if he sounds sort of loco to me, too.” Then he nodded at Stringer and said, “Go on, seeing you made that dreadful accusation about a mighty pretty lady, old son.”
Stringer sighed and said, “I think she’s pretty, too. She asked me to walk her home this evening and I might have, if I hadn’t been such a sissy. Her swell invite was no doubt issued with a colder welcome here than coffee and cake. She had a heap of time after I left her office to get in touch with her old pal Walter and have him waiting for us here. I’d say that was how come his new gas buggy was parked out back.”
They were both staring at him in flabbergasted silence, so he blew smoke out both nostrils like an impatient old bull and told Tilghman, “Add it up, Bill. She was working in the BIA office, with files at hand just crammed with information about everybody. Her boss, Davis, was in charge of the Osage desk. Yet, when I stopped by to talk of such matters this afternoon she showed me useless files on Creek and Cherokee. She allowed, sort of casual, she knew who Walter Bluefeather might be. She had to, being he was the most important Osage they had files on.”
He smiled at the pale faced part-Cherokee to add, “You let me take a peek at a handful of other Osage married up to get into the oil business. You figured it’d look suspicious if you didn’t have anything on Osage at the Osage desk. But I can count, and even just counting numbers, I saw the moment I looked at that oil field blueprint that there were ten times as many Osage in the rock-oil trade than you ever allowed there was.”
She started to cry. Bill Tilghman stared hard at Stringer to say, “Aw, now look what you’ve gone and done. I find that gas buggy parked out back a mite sinister, I’ll allow. And I have to say your notion works, until you try to prove one word of it. Let’s say this little lady had the motive. I know all too well what the government pays me, and it can’t be paying a secretary at the BIA half that much. I can see how she’d have had the opportunity as well. Working the Osage desk, even when her boss was out of the office, surely put her in position to plot with old Bluefeather and he just proved tonight that he was a crook.”
The older man stared down wistfully at his untasted helping of fudge cake and went on, “Bull Durham, out back, had to be in on it. But all we could prove for sure in court was that both bad boys needed some fool place to leave a gas buggy when neither was driving it. Even if we got the neighbors to say they’d ever noticed either Bluefeather or Durham one step closer to Miss Tenkiller’s coffee and cake, that still wouldn’t prove she was more than, say, a playpretty either might have called on from time to time.”
Helen Tenkiller blushed and snapped, “All right. If you must know I was having an affair with Walter Bluefeather, and why not? He was rich and handsome and I’m not too proud to kiss a good-looking Indian, being one myself, damn it!”
Stringer shook his head wearily and said, “Let’s not worry about how well Cherokee breeds and full blood Osage might or might not admire one another, Miss Helen. You set the whole thing up as a business deal, with Bluefeather as your muscle and Bull Durham laying pipes sneaky. When your boss, Davis, got curious enough to worry any of you, you had him killed by Willy Whitehorse, the only other Indian in on the deal. When another Indian nailed your young dupe, and I was still sniffing around, you tried to make a date with me so’s Bluefeather could finish me off, here. When Bull Durham spotted me sniffing even closer at the oil refinery, Bluefeather lit out after me and we all know how that turned out, don’t we?”
Bill Tilghman cut in to say, “Hold on. How come Bluefeather left his gas buggy parked out back if he meant to get the drop on you over in the railroad yards, MacKail?”
S
tringer looked disgusted and asked, “Would you track a man down aboard a white Buick if you didn’t want it known you were still in town? Walter did get the drop on me. I was lucky. If I hadn’t been, he’d have just come back here, cranked her up, and been back out on the Rocking Tipi by the time anyone got around to asking him if he’d heard I was dead.”
He stared soberly at their hostess again as he added, “When Bull Durham saw the jig was up, he came back here to light out the same way. I suspected he might. So I got here first and made sure the motor wouldn’t start. Before you ask me how I knew where to look for Bluefeather’s horseless carriage, I knew he’d come to town with it and it wasn’t parked near the refinery, Lacey’s office or even near the Lacey house. That’s how I knew I was right about Bluefeather not confiding everything in his lawyer. He’d never even bothered to visit his white wife.”
He took another drag and went on, “When I couldn’t get the Laceys to work I looked up this address in the Tulsa directory and hit the jackpot. I’m sorry about this, too, Miss Helen. For I was hoping your gracious invite might have been the start of a much more friendly relationship.”
She told him again he was crazy. Bill Tilghman didn’t seem to think so now, but he still said, “I dunno, Stringer. This sweet young thing surely has a lot of questions to answer when I haul her afore the grand jury. I reckon I’d better, since not another soul fits so fine as your mastermind. But what if she just hangs tough and defies us to prove it?”
Helen snapped, wild eyed, “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I confess to one word of these wild charges. I’ll just hold my head high and say, sure, I just love to kiss men, red and white, and sure they park out back when they come calling on me!”
Stringer just went on staring at her. So she said, defiantly, “So my boss was gunned in a saloon fight and when you questioned me at the office, I may have forgotten some of the folders we had on one or two Osage clients. What do you want to make of it, that I’m just a dumb female breed that they never should have hired to begin with?”