Cherokee

by Giles Tippette

“I don’t see the point. You know Norris has always felt like he wasn’t as much a part of us as he should be. If he knew this, I think it would hurt him bad.”

  Ben said, “Then let’s don’t tell him. Like I say, what difference does it make? He’s gonna act like a horse’s ass anyway. What about Howard? You ever going to break down and let him know you know?”

  I shook my head. “What for? He’ll probably come around you trying to act sly to see if I’ve told you.”

  Ben laughed. “I know you don’t think I can look innocent, but I can.”

  I punched him on the shoulder and we started back for the house. Just before we got to the steps Ben said, “One damn thing that pisses me off. You know when you left you give me permission to buy twenty-five thousand dollars worth of new blood for the horse herd? Well, you told Norris to transfer some money into the horse herd account on account of it was empty. Well, the sonofabitch got hisself shot before he could do it. An’ that auction is due up damn quick and he’s laid up in bed.”

  I stopped and reached in my hip pocket and got out my wallet. I found the deposit slip on the First U.S. Cherokee National Bank for the $25,000 and handed it to him. I said, “I’ll endorse that and you take it down to the bank in Blessing and draft on that Cherokee bank for the money. You don’t need Norris for that.”

  He looked at the slip for a second and then he smiled. “Hell, why not. We got Cherokee blood, we might as well have some of that Cherokee money.”

  “Present from your momma,” I said.

  We went on into the house to drink some whiskey and give Norris and Howard a hard time. Just before we went through the door Ben said, “Damn palefaces, drink Injun’s whiskey. Maybe Injun take scalps.”

  I said, “Damn right, brother.”

  Please keep reading for a special excerpt of the next Justa Williams adventure.

  When Justa’s brother lands in a Mexican jail for protecting his land, Justa has no choice but to take the law into his own hands.

  Jailbreak by Giles Tippette, Available October 2016 from Lyrical Press.

  YOUR LAND OCCUPIED BY TEN TO TWELVE MEN STOP CAN’T BE SURE WHAT THEY’RE DOING BECAUSE THEY RUN STRANGERS OFF STOP APPEAR TO HAVE A GOOD MANY CATTLE GATHERED STOP APPEAR TO BE FENCING STOP ALL I KNOW STOP.

  I read the telegram twice and then I said, “Why this is crazy as hell! That land wouldn’t support fifty head of cattle.”

  We were all gathered in the big office. Even Dad was there, sitting in his rocking chair. I looked up at him. “What do you make of this, Howard?”

  He shook his big, old head of white hair. “Beats the hell out of me, Justa. I can’t figure it.”

  Ben said, “Well, I don’t see where it has to be figured. I’ll take five men and go down there and run them off. I don’t care what they’re doing. They ain’t got no business on our land.”

  I said, “Take it easy, Ben. Aside from the fact you don’t need to be getting into any more fights this year, I can’t spare you or five men. The way this grass is drying up we’ve got to keep drifting those cattle.”

  Norris said, “No, Ben is right. We can’t have such affairs going on with our property. But we’ll handle it within the law. I’ll simply take the train down there, hire a good lawyer and have the matter settled by the sheriff. Shouldn’t take but a few days.”

  Well, there wasn’t much I could say to that. We couldn’t very well let people take advantage of us, but I still hated to be without Norris’s services even for a few days. On matters other than the ranch he was an expert, and it didn’t seem like there was a day went by that some financial question didn’t come up that only he could answer. I said, “Are you sure you can spare yourself for a few days?”

  He thought for a moment and then nodded. “I don’t see why not. I’ve just moved most of our available cash into short-term municipal bonds in Galveston. The market is looking all right and everything appears fine at the bank. I can’t think of anything that might come up.”

  I said, “All right. But you just keep this in mind. You are not a gun hand. You are not a fighter. I do not want you going anywhere near those people, whoever they are. You do it legal and let the sheriff handle the eviction. Is that understood?”

  He kind of swelled up, resenting the implication that he couldn’t handle himself. The biggest trouble I’d had through the years when trouble had come up had been keeping Norris out of it. Why he couldn’t just be content to be a wagon load of brains was more than I could understand. He said, “Didn’t you just hear me say I intended to go through a lawyer and the sheriff? Didn’t I just say that?”

  I said, “I wanted to be sure you heard yourself.”

  He said, “Nothing wrong with my hearing. Nor my approach to this matter. You seem to constantly be taken with the idea that I’m always looking for a fight. I think you’ve got the wrong brother. I use logic.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “You remember when that guy kicked you in the balls when they were holding guns on us? And then we chased them twenty miles and finally caught them?”

  He looked away. “That has nothing to do with this.”

  “Yeah?” I said, enjoying myself. “And here’s this guy, shot all to hell. And what was it you insisted on doing?”

  Ben laughed, but Norris wouldn’t say anything.

  I said, “Didn’t you insist on us standing him up so you could kick him in the balls? Didn’t you?”

  He sort of growled, “Oh, go to hell.”

  I said, “I just want to know where the logic was in that.”

  He said, “Right is right. I was simply paying him back in kind. It was the only thing his kind could understand.”

  I said, “That’s my point. You just don’t go down there and go to paying back a bunch of rough hombres in kind. Or any other currency for that matter.”

  That made him look over at Dad. He said, “Dad, will you make him quit treating me like I was ten years old? He does it on purpose.”

  But he’d appealed to the wrong man. Dad just threw his hands in the air and said, “Don’t come to me with your troubles. I’m just a boarder around here. You get your orders from Justa. You know that.”

  Of course he didn’t like that. Norris had always been a strong hand for the right and wrong of a matter. In fact, he may have been one of the most stubborn men I’d ever met. But he didn’t say anything, just gave me a look and muttered something about hoping a mess came up at the bank while he was gone and then see how much boss I was.

  But he didn’t mean nothing by it. Like most families, we fought amongst ourselves and, like most families, God help the outsider who tried to interfere with one of us.