Crying Blood - An Alafair Tucker Mystery Page 5

  Sally had come up to the gate to meet them, trailing Alafair and Martha behind her. “Hey, Scott. What brings you and your friend out here on a Sunday afternoon. Y’all et?”

  “Thank you, ma’am. We’ve et.” He turned to his companion, who was standing quietly at his side, hat in hand. “Aunt Sally, this here is John Barger, the county sheriff. He’s come down from Muskogee on the train this morning because he’d like to have a word with Shaw about that body him and James found. With Uncle Peter, too, since that’s his land.”

  Barger greeted her with a solemn nod. “Sorry to be bothering you on a Sunday, ma’am.”

  “Sorry you have to be away from your family today, Sheriff. Well, come on in and have some pie and coffee, at least, and y’all men can chat all you want. Martha, would you please go down to the paddock and fetch your daddy and grandpapa into the parlor?”

  Chapter Ten

  Both Shaw and Gee Dub were a head taller than Peter, yet both had some trouble keeping up with him as he chugged down the hill toward the horse paddock, his purposeful stride aided by an ash walking stick. They could see from a distance that Peter’s handsome Tennessee walker stallion was already on its way to meet them. The McBrides’ main source of income was from their orchards, but Peter’s small herd of Tennessee walker horses was his greatest pleasure.

  Being a breeder himself, Shaw was no mean judge of horseflesh. He had seen many a fine animal in his time. But the sight of Red Allen trotting toward them across the pasture with his neat head bobbing up and down in time to his distinctive gliding gait never failed to make the man catch his breath. The stallion was a tall horse, long-necked with sloping shoulders. His long, ivory-colored mane and tail made a startling contrast to his burnished chestnut coat. There was not a horse owner in the county who wouldn’t love to own one of Red Allen’s strong, smooth-striding offspring. He was one of the most sought-after studs in eastern Oklahoma, and Peter was able to name his price for the horse’s services.

  Shaw himself was proud owner of two of Red Allen’s daughters; his own saddle horse, Hannah, and Gee Dub’s beloved half-thoroughbred mare, Penny. Neither mare was a full-blood walker, but both had inherited their father’s smooth gait. A rider could stay in the saddle all day and never tire.

  By the time they reached the fence Red Allen was waiting for them, his ears pitched forward and his nostrils wide, eager for the treat he knew the old man had for him. Horse and man exchanged a breath before Peter offered an apple on his outstretched palm.

  “Sha, macushla, machree,” he murmured. Peter had lived in America for more than fifty years. Long enough for his Irish accent to abate considerably. Yet in moments of extreme tenderness—with babies, with his wife in the middle of the night, with his horses—he still spoke in the language his mother had whispered in his ear when he was a child.

  Gee Dub reached across the fence to stroke Red Allen’s neck and the horse nodded his approval. “I’ll be switched, Grandpapa. He must be getting on toward twenty years old, yet he’s as full of vinegar as a yearling.”

  Peter put a tender hand on the horse’s muzzle. “Yes, I made a special trip to Tennessee for this one and I do believe that was the year before you were born. He’s a fine stout-hearted fellow, he is. You know, boys, last year alone he earned enough in stud fees to pay for the new cider mill I lately put in. It’s true he is no youngster but he still does his duty with enthusiasm.”

  “Too bad you’re so persnickety about where he does it, McBride.”

  The strange voice behind them caused all three men to flinch and turn around. Red Allen started at their alarm and shied away from the fence.

  Gee Dub blinked at the man with the sour expression glaring at them them from the back of a bay gelding. The man was as scrawny as a weed and just about as tall. He was dressed in a heavy sheepskin coat and a flat tweed cap and sat stiff and indignant in the saddle. Fierce blue eyes blazed out of a wizened, snub-nosed face.

  Shaw’s mustache twitched. “Hello, Mr. Doolan.”

  “Hello, Shaw. It’s been a long time.” Doolan’s greeting was perfectly pleasant but his scalding gaze never wavered from Peter’s face.

  “Doolan!” Peter seethed. “You’ve got a nerve! What the hell are you doing on my property?”

  “I’ve come to try one more time to talk sense into you, McBride.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Don’t be so hard-headed. My money is as good as the next man’s. And I’m prepared to offer you more of it than the next man, at that.”

  “I don’t care if you offer me a king’s ransom, Doolan. I’ll never let this beast stand stud for a mare of yours while I have breath in my body.”

  The sudden tense atmosphere was too much for Red Allen. He wheeled and trotted away. His fast-walking pace was so eye-catching, his back feet overstriding his front hoof prints as he sailed across the pasture, that the argument was suspended for a moment while the men admired the beauty of it.

  “You’re a spiteful heathen, McBride.” The argument may have been delayed but was no less heated when Doolan resumed. “There’s no stud in Oklahoma can hold a candle to yon stallion and well you know it. Talk some sense into the fool, Shaw. I’d have to haul my mares clean to Tennessee to find another half so fine, nor could I buy another of such quality even if I could afford to scour the country to find him.”

  Shaw threw up his hands and took a step back.

  Doolan was undeterred by the lack of support. “You mean to keep my herd second-rate and drive me out of business, McBride.”

  Peter had had enough. “You’re the one who’s second rate, Doolan. I can do nothing for the poor beasts you own already. But I’ll be damned if I’ll do anything to help you get more of them to abuse!”

  “For the sake of forty years of comradeship…”

  “It took me forty years to find out what kind of man you are. So save your wind. Go back to Okmulgee and that torture chamber you call a horse farm. And mend your ways!” Peter’s face was a dangerous shade of red as he shook his cane in the air. “Get out get out get out!”

  “You were seeing things! I never abused an animal in my life!” Doolan was already riding away as he yelled back over his shoulder.

  Peter looked murderous. Shaw put a hand on his stepfather’s arm in an attempt to calm him.

  Peter didn’t notice. “If you ever come back onto my land without permission again, I’ll shoot you, Doolan, you spivey maggot!”

  “You’re a hard man, McBride.” Doolan’s voice faded as the bay galloped toward the road.

  “Papa,” Shaw began, but Peter cut him off with a look.

  “I’ve no desire to discuss it, son. Gee Dub, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gee Dub’s response was somber, but the moment Peter turned away the young man gave Shaw a wicked grin that said he had rather enjoyed the spectacle of the ancient warriors breathing fire at one another.

  Peter seemed to have quite returned to his even-tempered self when he nodded toward the path to the house. “Oh, look, boys. Yonder comes Martha.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “I was hoping that if I come on a Sunday I could find y’all at home and not off out in the fields. I didn’t expect to find you and Mr. Tucker and his boys all together, Mr. McBride, but I’m glad of it. Means I can get back to Muskogee quicker. My wife will appreciate that.”

  Sheriff Barger took the plateful of apple pie from Alafair’s tray. She slowly moved around to offer a piece to Scott, who was sitting next to the sheriff on the red, horsehair-stuffed settee. Shaw, Peter, Gee Dub, and Charlie were arrayed in a semi-circle of armchairs and kitchen chairs in front of the two law officers. Alafair and the other females had been banished to the kitchen, at least for the interim, while the men retold the tale of Buttercup and the bones in the woods. Alafair was taking her time as she served the pie.

  “Me and the boys were just talking about what they found on my property,sheriff, so I can’t say I’m surprised to see you
today. Will you be wanting to talk to my other son, James, before you leave town?” Grandpapa Peter was not James’ and Shaw’s biological father, but he had long ago forgotten that fact.

  “I already been over there this morning, Mr. McBride, and heard what him and his sons had to say. I read the report that Morgan wrote. But it helps me to hear the story over again straight from the mouths of them that lived it. But the main reason I’m here today is to ask you what you know about the history of that piece of land, sir. I’ve been doing some research, and according to the deed, you bought the property from one Lucretia Hawkins in nineteen and six. Did you know Miz Hawkins beforehand?”

  “We were acquainted. But in truth I only knew her because I was friends with her second husband, Roane Hawkins.”

  “And how’d you know Hawkins?”

  “Me and Roane were friends from way back when we were both pony soldiers fighting the Apaches out in the Arizona Territory.” Peter’s luxurious silvery-white hair, blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and sly Irish charm gave him more than a passing resemblance to a beardless Santa Claus, though this Santa had an iron core under his jolly exterior.

  “How’d Hawkins come by that property?” Barger took a bite of pie. The sharp look in his eye as he asked the question told Alafair that he already knew the answer.

  Peter’s wry smile said that he knew he was being tested. “Miz Hawkins was a Muskogee Creek and half that land was her allotment, Sheriff. The other half was alloted to her first husband, Mr. Goingback. She inherited it when he died.”

  Barger put his plate on the side table and fished a piece of paper out of his inside jacket pocket. He finished chewing and swallowing his mouthful of pie while he unfolded it and gave it a cursory perusal before spreading it out on the side table between himself and Peter. Scott could see it by leaning across, but Shaw and the boys had to stand before they were able to tell what it was.

  “That’s a parcel map,” Shaw observed.

  Barger nodded. “It is. Central Muskogee County. Dated nineteen and ten.”

  “There’s Oktaha, Grandpapa,” Charlie said, “and there’s your property right there. It says McBride right on it!”

  Barger tapped the map with his finger. “Right here is where you found the grave, Mr. Tucker. Must be a mile from the farmhouse.” He shifted to face Peter. “That’s a good-sized parcel, Mr. McBride. You go out there much?”

  “No, not often. Once or twice a year, mostly to make sure there are no squatters. I thought of leasing it out but never have come up with a tenant.”

  “That’s lot of property to be sitting idle.”

  If Barger’s tone was accusatory, Peter didn’t acknowledge it. “It is. The parcel consists of Miz Hawkins’ original one hundred-sixty-acre allotment, as well as her first husband’s that she inherited when he died.”

  “Yes, it says at the county recorder’s office that the property originally belonged to a Lucretia Goingback, enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. I expect she’s the same Lucretia Hawkins.” He refolded the paper and returned it to his pocket. “How’d your friend Mr. Hawkins come to be married to a Creek woman, Mr. McBride?”

  Peter settled back in his chair, resigned to telling a tale that he didn’t appear to enjoy. “After Roane and I were discharged from the Army back in ’70, we worked together at the Tucker sawmill in Lone Elm, Arkansas. He heard that the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas railroad was thinking to build a spur that’d run right through that wooded country down around Oktaha, so he hatched a scheme to go to the Indian Territory, build a sawmill in that area and get rich.”

  “When was that, Mr. McBride?”

  Peter shrugged. “About ’89, ’90, around then.”

  “White folks couldn’t buy Indian land back then, I believe,” Barger observed,

  “No, sir. Roane could sell water to a fish, though. He talked Goingback into going into business with him. They were in the process of clearing the land when a tree fell on the poor Indian chap. The next thing I know, Roane was married to his widow and named guardian of her affairs.”

  “Could Slim be Mr. Goingback, Grandpapa?” Gee Dub asked.

  “No, Gee, Goingback had a proper funeral, I hear.”

  Barger nodded. “Yes, Goingback is resting peaceably in the Indian cemetery just south of Muskogee. So it wasn’t him you found.” He turned back to Peter. “Did Mr. and Miz Hawkins seem happy with one another, you think?”

  “If you’re asking if Roane only married Lucretia to get her land, sheriff, I have to say that I wouldn’t put it past him. Roane was a bit of a boyo as long as I knew him. For a while after he married Lucretia I went out to visit with him quite a bit. They seemed to suit each other all right. Me and Roane drifted apart over the years, though, and I hadn’t seen him for quite a spell before I bought the property.”

  “I spent a few weeks out there helping Roane Hawkins clear a space for his sawmill, sheriff,” Shaw volunteered. “I remember him as a big, loud, friendly sort of fellow, quick to rile and quick to get over it. I never saw much of her but when she fed us. She was a quiet woman, kind of pretty. She already had a couple of half-grown children with Goingback. A girl name of Jenny, and a boy, maybe seventeen, who worked with us. I don’t remember his name, but him and Mr. Hawkins acted like they were close, laughing and joking and all. Lucretia and Roane had two of their own that I know about. The youngest wasn’t even born last I saw them. Of course the children had their allotments, too, surrounding their mother’s. See, here they are on the map. The two Goingbacks to the east and the Hawkins boys’ to the west. I remember Mr. Hawkins joking that when his sawmill got built, between his wife’s property and the children’s he’d have enough lumber to build a city as big as Chicago.”

  Barger dabbed his mustache with his napkin, folded the white linen square carefully and placed it on the table in front of him.

  He’s about to spring something on us, Alafair thought.

  “Near as I’ve been able to find out, not one of those children took up their allotment. It would have been quite an empire if they had. But what I wonder is if this Hawkins was so all-fired anxious to get his hands on all that property in the first place and such a devoted family man, why did he up and run off and leave them without so much as a fare-thee-well?”

  Shaw’s eyebrows shot up. “I never heard that he did!”

  Peter wasn’t surprised. He breathed a laugh. “Well, sir, that’s Roane for you. As long as he thought he was going to become a timber millionaire he worked that piece like a demon. But when the KATY rail spur didn’t happen and there wasn’t any way for him to get the timber to market, Roane lost interest pretty quick and took a powder.”

  “He abandoned his wife and little children?” Alafair was so shocked that she blurted it out. When Barger looked at her she nearly clapped her hand over her mouth, dismayed at having drawn attention to herself.

  It was Peter who answered her. “I’m sorry to say that that wasn’t the first time Roane had done such a thing, Alafair.”

  “So you bought the land from Lucretia and not Roane, Papa?” Shaw asked.

  “That’s right. I hate to tell the tale since the poor woman was so hard done by.”

  Barger returned to business. “How did it come about that she sold the property to you?”

  “Well, sir, just before Roane ran out on her, the oldest son took out on his own. Then Indian Affairs came and took both her half-white boys to boarding school. Not long after that her daughter with Goingback got married. Lucretia had some kin that lived around there but I expect it was lonely for her out there by herself. She came here and asked me if I’d buy it. She needed money to leave and I expect I’m the only person she knew who had some. Besides, with Roane gone she probably didn’t much care about the place any more. She was a traditional Creek and didn’t think you could own land any more than you can own the air.”

  Alafair noted with interest that Peter didn’t mention anything about a ghost on the property.

  “Beside
s,” Peter continued, “I felt bad for her. I knew what Roane was like. But he lived out there so long that I really thought he maybe would stick with her.”

  “He’d skipped out before, you say?”

  “At least twice before that I know of. He left a wife and baby in Boston when he joined the Army. I believe he left someone in Ireland as well, though I don’t know if he married her.”

  Charlie made a little sound, like an embarrassed giggle. Did men really do things like that?

  “I assume you walked that property before you bought it.”

  “I did. I never saw anything suspicious.”

  Shaw joined the conversation. “Has anybody decided how long the fellow has been out there?”

  “We’re thinking it’s been about ten years, not much less. Could be more.”

  “So you have a suspicion that he ended up in the ground right around the time that Roane Hawkins ran off? Or are you thinking that Hawkins didn’t really run off after all?”

  “I can’t say, Mr. Tucker. But if I could find Hawkins or Lucretia either one and ask them about it, that would go a long way toward helping us find out who our friend is and how he got there.” Barger turned back to Peter. “Where’d she go, this Lucretia?”

  Peter picked up his cup, took a sip and set it down before he answered. “Could be she went to live with some of the tribal Creeks. There’s a bunch not too far from there, up around Tiger Mountain. That’s where her older son went when he abandoned his allotment.”

  “All right then. And now, Mr. Tucker, boys, why don’t y’all tell me again how you came to find the bones.”

  Alafair had heard this part before. She decided not to press her luck any further and withdrew to the kitchen to update Sally and the girls.

  Chapter Twelve

  Charlie appeared in the kitchen door. “Grandma, Sheriff Barger asks if y’all would kindly come into the dining room and have a look at some things he brought?”