The Arrow Keeper’s Song (6 page)

Emmiline literally propelled Tom through the doorway. She waved at her brother, who only scowled at the sight of them. Tom ignored Clay's open disapproval and headed around the building to the hitching rail where he'd left the roan. It was obvious Clay resented the attention his sister was paying this man of the Southern Cheyenne. For the sake of Emmiline and her father, Tom continued to give Clay Benedict a wide berth.

Clay watched his sister disappear around the building arm in arm with Tom Sandcrane, then dismounted and entered the BIA office. He found Allyn in his office. The agent was carefully examining the locked drawers of his desk to satisfy himself that none of them had been forced. He looked up at Clay standing in the doorway, a slightly bemused expression on his face.

“Lose something?”

“No. But I shall lock the door from now on.” Allyn straightened.

“Emmiline's gone off with the Indian.”

“Yes. It was my suggestion.”

“I don't like it,” Clay flatly stated.

“No one asked you to,” Allyn said. “She is occupying his time right now. I need for that to continue a while longer. I do not underestimate young Sandcrane. He is smart and extremely perceptive. I won't relax until after the land rush.”

“I just think …”

“Don't,” said Allyn. “Don't think. I'll do that. You listen. And obey your father. And maybe I can salvage something of the wreck you've made of your life.” He patted his son on the shoulder. It was the same conciliatory gesture he had used with Tom. “Now, let's get on to El Reno. I have a most important meeting.”

A clock out in the front office began to toll high noon. El Reno lay an hour's ride to the southeast. Allyn Benedict figured he had plenty of time.

“What about the troopers?” Clay asked.

“Don't worry,” Allyn said. “I hold all the rules.” He grinned, his features jubilant. “This game isn't about to start without me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HE INDIAN AGENT FOR THE
S
OUTHERN
C
HEYENNE LIVED IN A
single-story shotgun house on the north side of Cross Timbers. With its whitewashed board and batten exterior, Benedict's home stood apart from the log cabins and sod huts surrounding the settlement. Allyn's wife Margaret—a buxom, heavyset woman who had forsaken her influential New England family and followed her husband to the “Wild West”—was working in the flower garden she had coaxed out of the arid Oklahoma soil. The garden, a collection of wild-flowers she had painstakingly transplanted from sojourns with her husband, had become overgrown with weeds during her recent illness, and many of the blooms were in danger of being smothered by less-desired growths. Her garden was much more than a passing interest. Allyn had grown distant of late. Margaret liked to blame the worries of administering the reservation, but deep within her heart of hearts she suspected the problem was far more serious. So she turned to the garden, to her little blossoms, and tried to convince herself that all this would pass and her husband would one day fall in love with her again.

There was a barn and small corral just east of the house, and when one of the horses whinnied and stamped its foot to announce the approaching couple from the settlement, Margaret straightened up and waved at her daughter and Tom as they entered the yard. Margaret's round cheeks were streaked with moisture beneath the shade afforded by her sweat-stained blue bonnet. A couple of wayward strands of silvery brown hair had escaped the bonnet and were sweat-plastered to her neck.

“Good morning, Tom. Have you rescued Emmiline from her father's clutches?”

“I reckon so,” Tom smiled, removing his hat. He looped the reins of the roan through the gate in a faded white picket fence that ran along the front of the house. “Glad to see you up and about.” The gate creaked open as he permitted Emmiline to enter in front of him.

“A chest cold in August is the worst thing. No strength to move about and too hot to stay in bed,” Margaret replied. She cast a forlorn eye at a cluster of firewheels she had recently watered. They'd live, but she was worried about the daisies. “A good, soaking rain would do wonders,” she said. “A little tending while I was sick wouldn't have hurt either.” She glared accusingly at her daughter.

“Mother … I simply don't have your skill and talents,” Emmiline replied. She glanced in Tom's direction. “Mother thinks that everyone should be able to …” She frowned, her voice trailing off. Tom wasn't even paying any attention to her. He wore a curious expression and was staring at a dust devil that had sprung up only a few yards away. The miniature whirlwind ruffled the weeds, caught at the hem of Margaret's dress and apron, and fanned their faces with its hot dusty breath.

The voices of the women grew distant to Tom and were obscured by the sound of his breathing as it rose and fell like ocean swells, and underneath it all the cadence of his beating heart, and from somewhere deep in his soul a lone keening chant and the tap-tap-tapping of a gourd rattle.

Stop
.

Stop this!

He wiped a hand across his face as the whirlwind spent it-self and dissipated. The sounds vanished. But in their wake they left a disturbing premonition. Seth …

“Tom Sandcrane!”

He gave a start and then looked at the girl. “I'm sorry,” he mumbled, and started toward his horse.

“But where are you going? What about our picnic?” Emmiline called after him, completely taken aback by his actions.

“I have to go. It's my father,” Tom said as he vaulted the picket fence and leaped into the saddle.

“Tom Sandcrane—have you taken leave of your senses?” the young woman called out. But her escort had already turned the roan and, with a swat of his hat across its flank, sent the animal galloping off in a shower of pebbles and a billowing coffee-colored cloud of dust.

“Indians are so terribly unpredictable,” Margaret sighed. “Be a good girl and make your mother a cup of tea.” She knelt and caught a cluster of dandelions in a stranglehold, ripped them from the earth, and tossed the undesirables atop an ever-growing pile of weeds. “Wait. Never mind,” the woman remarked. “I just remembered, we're out of tea. Perhaps there will be a package for us at the fort.” She sighed. “It's the little pleasures I have missed most. Well … maybe things will be different.”

“If father's plans work out,” Emmiline added.

“I for one shall not hold my breath,” Margaret said, kneeling in the garden. Allyn had promised much and delivered so little. Still, there was always a first time. She paused to dab the perspiration from her face with the hem of her apron and could not help but note that Emmiline continued to stare after the retreating figure of Tom Sandcrane. He was already past the Catholic church and following a well-worn trail up the cleared slope, dotted with half-a-dozen log houses, chicken coops, and split-rail corrals. A couple of mongrel hounds nipped at the roan's heels until Tom rode clear of the settlement and vanished beneath a canopy of white oaks.

“Don't like him overly much, dear,” Margaret added. “It will only make things harder.”

Words to the wise
, thought Emmiline,
but too late, alas
—
too late
.

CHAPTER FIVE

P
ANTHER
H
ALL WAS A LONG
,
LOW-ROOFED ROADHOUSE NESTLED
among a grove of post oaks. The building's rough-hewn log exterior blended in with its surroundings and attracted little attention to itself. A man riding the North Road would never notice the roadhouse unless he chose to follow the wheel-rutted path that veered from the main road and cut across a hundred yards of meadow, dappled with crimson firewheels, Indian paintbrush, and brilliant yellow sunflowers. To reach Panther Hall, a man had to be willing to leave the daylight behind and enter shadow.

The consumption of spirits was expressly forbidden on the reservation, but that hadn't stopped Jerel Tall Bull and his younger brother, Curtis, from setting up their notorious establishment. There was some speculation that the commanding officer at Fort Reno received a share of Panther Hall's profits in return for his not sending troops onto the reservation to burn out the establishment. The Southern Cheyenne, even those among the tribe who disapproved of the brothers, were loath to lodge any complaints concerning their actions. Indeed there was a certain amount of grudging respect for the Tall Bulls. As for the BIA, Allyn Benedict had specifically chosen to avoid any confrontation with Jerel and Curtis. The brothers were the offspring of warriors and had a following among the tribe.

Jerel Tall Bull had thrown his considerable support behind Benedict's efforts to abolish the reservation. He was as anxious as anyone to see it dissolved and the entire grant opened to settlement. The Tall Bulls would be able to operate without fear of being closed down. There were far more profits to be made in a thriving township than could ever be realized in their present rural surroundings catering to a bunch of poor Cheyenne.

So against official government policy, the Tall Bulls continued to operate their roadhouse with impunity in these waning days of the reservation system. They offered a variety of vices and thirsts. For whiskey, women, or a game of chance, the roadhouse was the place to go. The only place. And only a fool went there unarmed.

“Hold it right there, Tom,” a voice called out. A pair of riders galloped up out of a draw to the right of Sandcrane. Tom halted about midway across the meadow and allowed the two men to approach. Both young men wore checkered shirts and Levi's tucked into scuffed boots. They carried double-barreled shotguns loaded with buckshot. Extra cartridges rattled in their vest pockets. He recognized them both. Pete Elk Head was a brash, troublesome youth with a history of brawls and petty thievery that frequently landed him in the tribal jail. John Iron Hail, the one who had called out, might be wild as a green-broke stallion, but he did not share Pete's criminal reputation. They were both seventeen, and like all seventeen-year-olds, they deemed themselves immortal.

John was the first to reach Tom Sandcrane. He flashed a grin, straightened his hat, and crossed his hands on the pommel of his saddle.

“Sorry Tom. Panther Hall's closed.”

“I can't believe that,” Tom remarked. “The Tall Bulls wouldn't lock their doors until the last drop of whiskey's been licked from the barrel.”

“What he means,” said Pete Elk Head, “is that Panther Hall is closed to
you.”
Pete was a swarthy half-breed youth with broad shoulders, pockmarked features, and a nose that had been flattened by a cantankerous mule. His knuckles were hardened scar tissue. John Iron Hail, unlike his quarrelsome companion, was by nature easygoing, if a bit lazy. But he'd never been able to walk away from a dare, a trait that often landed him in trouble. John even seemed embarrassed by this confrontation, for Tom had been like a big brother to him in the past.

“Jerel's orders. They have something special going on, just for their friends,” John explained. He couldn't bring himself to level his shotgun at Tom. He pointed the barrel at Sandcrane's horse.

“The pit again?” Tom asked. The Tall Bulls had dug a hole in the prairie out behind the roadhouse where the patrons wagered bets on half-starved animals driven by torture and abuse into fighting to the death. The Pit was fifteen feet in diameter and three feet deep and was ringed by a three-foot wall to protect the onlookers and keep the combatants from escaping. The two men blocking the wheel-rutted path didn't need to answer. The sound of distant snarls and growling trailed on the summer breeze.

“My father pass through here?” Tom sternly inquired, his eyes narrowing. The question was directed at John, who shifted uncomfortably in the saddle.

“The likes of that drunken old sot are always welcome at Panther Hall,” Pete answered as he rode up alongside Tom and then jabbed Sandcrane in the ribs with the muzzle of his shotgun. “Now, you can just turn that roan and ride back the way you come, 'cause the day ain't dawned a tamed buck like yourself could ever get past me.”

A striking rattlesnake was slow as molasses in winter compared to what happened next. Tom's left arm shot out. His hand caught the shotgun halfway down the barrel and jammed the stock into Pete's belly. Air exploded from the young man's lips. Tom tore the weapon from Pete's loosened grasp and struck him again, this time in the face, breaking the man's nose for the second time in his young life. Pete, still gasping for breath, toppled from the saddle and landed on his rump in the middle of a patch of sunflowers.

“Sumbith! My nothe! You bath-tard. You broke my nothe.” Pete bellowed as he cupped his hands to his face and glared at his attacker. “John, you gonna juth thtand there?” Blood filled his mouth from a split upper lip and gum.

“Yeah, John,” Tom added, without even bothering to look at Pete's companion. His fingers curled around the twin triggers of the weapon he had just confiscated.

“Shit,” John Iron Hail muttered, wiping the back of his hand across his dry mouth and square jaw.

Tom glanced in his direction and saw the seventeen-year-old return his shotgun to its saddle scabbard, ending the incident before someone else, namely John Iron Hail, got hurt.

“It isn't like you to wear Tall Bull's brand.” Tom commented.

“Just helping out,” John replied with a shrug. “Their money spends as good as anyone's. And I aim to have me a little extra cash when the land goes public. I figure to claim me a fair piece of grazing land and raise some horses out on the strip north of the Canadian.” Glancing past Tom, John's eyes widened. That and the sound of a broken twig were all the warning Tom needed. Pete Elk Head had mistaken the brief interchange for an opportunity to get at Sandcrane while he was preoccupied. With scarcely a break in the conversation, Tom turned and delivered a well-timed kick to Pete's jaw as the youthful assailant attempted to drag Sandcrane from horseback. Pete's head snapped back, and his eyes glazed over as he crumpled alongside the roan.