Chapter 13 - The King of Creekborn

Chapter 13

A sheriff is not supposed to be a horse thief. A man who is accompanying people, ones that he summoned no less, is not supposed to abandon them out on the prairie. Such were the thoughts that swirled in my head as we made it into town. Plaindale had woken up. People were out, much like Creekborn must have been at that hour. A few children played in the dirt beside the first house we came to. We heard the blacksmith hammering away until we saw him, a slight man in overalls and already covered in grime. He gave a slight nod and then flashed a queer look at Hute. And that right there brought me out of my stupor. I realized we were going to have problems if I didn’t do something, and long before we got to Creekborn.

“Now hold on, Hute,” I said, hurrying ahead a few steps. Hute seemed too at ease in town. I couldn’t figure it. Surely he must have some inkling of how white people were going to take to an Otoe Indian strolling through town, pulling a horse by the reins.

“What is it?” he said as he pulled the horse to a stop and turned to look at me.

“Well…” I said.

“He iz vorried zey vill beat you to death,” Klara said to Hute. A bit blunt, but accurate.

This gave Hute a smile. I barely recognized it at the time, but later I realized that Klara was making jokes with Hute then. And, what’s even crazier, he thought they were funny. Hute said, “The white man will love me when he hears me talk,” Hute said. “I have been in the white man’s town many times. I am a hero in many white man’s towns.”

“Well, they don’t know you in this one,” I said. “Not the blacksmith anyway. He looked like he was going to shoot you.”

“I will tell them my story,” he said. “And I will tell them my jokes. They will like my story. The white man loves my jokes.”

I would have laughed if there had been time. Did he really think it worked that way? Did he think they would seat him around a table and talk with him, regal in his stories, however real they seemed to him?

“Look,” I said, walking to his left side, pinning him between me and the horse, “at least let me get you cleaned up a little. I’ll buy you something nice to wear.” Dressing him up and out of a shirtless, shoeless Indian might give us enough cover to at least make it through town. I had seen such Indians back in Creekborn. They were at least left alone.

“What’s wrong with this?” Hute asked. He thumbed his necklace of teeth and rattled them against his bare chest, then tipped his top hat forward.

“Well,” I said, “they’re great and all…”

“He vants you to look like a vite man, Hute. You vill have to look like a vite man for a bit,” Klara said from over my shoulder.

“It wouldn’t hurt is all,” I said. “This is not the hard part. This is just something we need to get past.”

Hute winked over my shoulder at Klara and agreed.

Five minutes later and we were in front of the main store – Carl’s Goods - Plaindale. A chipped and sun worn placard beneath, hung on chains but still in the wind, announced they had a telegram wire . I couldn’t remember the last time I saw it, but it looked exactly the same. No new paint like Butch’s bank. It was true that Tibbets had done a number on Creekborn, and that number hadn’t come to here. I wondered for a short second if it wouldn’t have been a better life to have been born here. Even born to a common man, and not Pa. Less to lose and less to gain, I figured. I guessed that I would be tending to some crops a couple of miles from this store. And although I was sure I would have my problems, they would not involve hauling an Indian and witch around Iowa.

I looked in the glass of the window and was pleased with what I saw – just the owner inside. He had his back turned, stocking brown packs of sugar high on a shelf. “Just let me do the talking,” I said as we walked up the steps.

I pulled out my money and rolled it up, got it to look as big as I could. The bell dinged as we passed through the door.

“You Carl?” I asked as the clerk turned around.

“No,” he said. He was an older man with white hair and white eyebrows. He pulled his half-glasses up from his chest, where they rested on a chain like the placard out front. “That would be my pappy,” the man said weakly. I was glad to see that he did not look like he would be much trouble. “And Pappy’s been dead now ten years.”

“So you must be Carl Junior?” I asked as cheerily as I could.

“How’d you guess?” he said, smiling. “Most people from out of town wouldn’t guess it. Well, the ones that knew my pa from before. Where you all from?”

“Well,” I said, “we’re up here visiting from Creekborn. I’m the sheriff thereabouts. People call me Tom J.”

“Creekborn ain’t too far, Tom J,” he said. His smile dampened as he looked Hute over, but it wasn’t completely gone.

Before he could get too good a look at us, I pulled up the wad of money and put it in front of my face. “This has been burning a hole in my pocket for some time, Carl Junior.”

“There isn’t much here,” he said. He waved his hand and told us to have a look, went back to stocking the shelf with the sugar.

We had a look.

There was little clothing in the store, just a small section in the back. I went for the stack of folded pants first, thinking of Hute’s size. He was a little shorter than me and skinnier. I had just pulled a pair I thought would fit and was turning around when a hand clasped me on the shoulder.

“I want that,” Hute said.

I followed the point of his finger. It lined the way to a ten-dollar suit fit roughly over a mannequin. It wasn’t as nice as what Tibbets wore, but it was as close as a suit would get without being imported.

“We’re trying,” I said, “to get you noticed less now. Not more.”

“You don’t want to spend the money?”

“Well,” I said, “it ain’t exactly cheap.”

“Ze man haz money,” Klara said. She stepped forward and felt the fabric of the waistcoat. She hummed a little at feeling it. “Ze man alwayz haz hiz money.”

I expected them to wait for an answer from me, my final decision. But before I could speak, Hute was already putting on the shirt…and the waistcoat…and the jacket.

He dropped his pants right there in the store, showing his glory to all, without a moment’s hesitation. I looked up to see if Carl Junior would protest, but he was still busy with the shelves.

Hute smiled at me. “Here,” he said, showing a wad of bills. It was three times the size of my own, “He will listen to this. The white man will always listen to this.”

Hute was completely dressed in another minute, except for shoes. Never did see the man put shoes on. But he looked presentable, if not a bit odd. The sleeves were long was all, his long fingernails curled out.

Carl Junior turned as he heard us approaching. “Say,” he said, “I was just thinking.” He put his hands on the counter next to the register and slapped down a couple of times. “You say you’re from Creekborn, isn’t that right?”

I told him I was.

“There was a telegram come here yesterday,” Carl said as he reached under the counter and pulled up a small wooden box, slid the top open. “Said something about Creekborn, I thought. What was your name again?”

“Tom Wade Junior,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You said Tom J, right? Any relation to the lawman up there?”

“That’s my pa,” I said. I saw no reason in expanding the conversation.

“Reason I forgot it was that…this was yesterday, see?...we was just about out to close for lunch.” He pulled out a stack of telegrams, all written on the thinnest paper I ever saw. “Had the wire working here for five years. You wouldn’t believe how many people never come to claim them. Else somebody dies. Else somebody doesn’t want the telegram.” He stopped shuffling and looked at us. “Can you imagine that? Not wanting a telegram?”

“I’d sure like to have it if it’s mine,” I said.

Carl Junior stopped on a paper and then dropped the stack of them. He said, “Mister, I sure am sorry.”

“About what?” I asked. I could feel the temperature rising in the room. I could feel something bad coming on. Eugene’s bloody face flashed in my head, but I didn’t care. “You lost it?”

“Wisht it were so simple,” he said. He put the telegram down on the counter, covering the message with one hand, but showing me the name with the other. It read FOR: THOMAS WAKE II

“That’s me,” I said. My hands balled up on their own, though I still had a mind to keep them below the counter. “You got to know that’s not me.”

“But you’re a Wade,” he said. He was smiling a bit, seemed to be enjoying it. “And giving out the mail to the wrong person is a…”

“I know what a god damn crime is,” I said. “I already told you I was the sheriff.”

“Well, so you claim,” Carl Junior said, snapping the paper back. “But we all know Tom Wade is the King of Creekorn, the sheriff up there. I’m not sure if I'm to believe you’re even his son.”

I pounded my left fist on the wood and my right hand went for the Colt. My right hand did not make metal.

I looked over at Hute, tried to find his eyes as he held on to my wrist. Had he lost what little was left of his mind? But my anger was gone like a candle went to wind. Because Hute’s other hand was on top of Carl Junior’s head. Hute was stroking the short hairs of the clerk’s head the way a shepherd might try to calm an old goat.

Stranger thing was - it was effective.

“You seem,” Carl Junior said, “like honest folk to me.” He pushed the telegram across the counter. He picked up the rest and put them back in the little box, slid the top closed. Then he turned around and started stocking the shelves again, like nothing happened.

APRIL 26 1890

SENT TO ALL POINTS OF WEBSTER COUNTY, IOWA

FOR: THOMAS WAKE II

THE MAYOR HAS CHANGED TACTICS. NEW GUN IN TOWN. IMPERATIVE THAT YOU ABANDON PLAN AND RETURN TO CREEKBORN AT ONCE.

BOONE NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

LIZBETH WADE, CREEKBORN, IOWA

I unclenched my fist only long enough to read it. Then I crumpled the thin paper up and shoved it in my pocket. I was almost turned around when I saw Hute throw his money down on the counter and grab Klara.

We were out the door.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” I said going down the steps. “This isn’t a game anymore. Not that it ever was, but it’s even less so now.”

“Vas never a game to us,” Klara said.

Ignoring that, I blurted out, “I’m going to take that last horse and ride it to death, if that’s what it takes. You two? Well, I don’t give a good damn what you do. Walk back to your cave, Indian. Klara,” I said, shoving my money into her hand, “take this and hire someone to get you back home. But I am gone, you hear? I’m done playing around out here.”

“We will get new horses,” Hute said.

“How you aim to manage that?” I asked. I took a step back from him. I still don’t know if it was so he wouldn’t touch me or I wouldn’t smack him. The thoughts that burned bright in my brain, though, I remember those. It was all of the townsfolk of Creekborn walking past us as my family helped me load up our wagon to leave town. It was Pa’s grave run over with weeds and the headstone turned brown from years of rain and neglect. It was Lizbeth’s scorn every time she looked at me till she left. But the big one, the one that scared me the most, was this: Clemmie on some barren floor somewhere, skinny to the bone without food to eat, a little older but no smarter, still staring at the pages of that fairy tale book.

Hute stood for a moment without speaking. He reached in the watch pocket of his new waistcoat. He pulled out the biggest nugget of gold I ever saw, ever even saw in a book. It was as big as Tibbets’ pocket watch, twice as shiny. “The white man will take this and give us a train if we ask for it. He will give us the best horses in this town. And we will all be back quicker than anything.”

“I can’t pay you back something like that, Hute,” I said. I was sure as hell going to take his help, no matter how it came, though. Anyway to beat back those thoughts. Because I realized right at once that he was right. It was the quickest way back.

“Let’s go,” he said. He slapped me on the shoulder and we began walking the rest of the way through town. I scanned right and left, looking for anyone that might have a horse. There were no people. There was not a horse.

We came in front of the hotel, not as big as Doocey’s, but still a right nice. It was full of people inside having breakfast. The smell of eggs and pancakes and coffee floated out the front door. Klara and Hute looked at the food on the tables, I’m sure, but all I could see was the row of horses out front.

“A man,” Hute said, “should have a full stomach before he goes to it.”

“Hell all to that,” I said. “We just need us those horses.”

“He vill get ze horsez. But first, he vill have breakfast.”

I looked over at Hute to see if he was on the same page as Klara, though by now, I knew they would be. He said nothing but smiled. He pulled the nugget out again, twirled it in his fingers. It shone like a second sun.

“A quick breakfast,” I said, “while I inquire about the horses.”

“Of course,” Hute said. He took off his top hat for the first time, exposing a scalp more scarred than a runaway slave’s back. Dropped his arm in front and made a big bow of it, even scraping his big toe along the dust in the road.

I did not sit with them as we entered, did not care to gauge the looks that Hute was going to get for whatever the reason. I went to the folks sitting, asking about the horses. I talked to the owner. I even talked to the cook. On along about ten minutes in, I heard a roaring of laughter.

When I turned around, Hute was wearing a bib over his new suit. There were five people on each side, come over from their own tables. The Otoe Indian was holding court, making huge sweeping gestures with his arms.

“Relax, sheriff,” Hute said, bringing his hands back down on the table, resting them there as if about to make prayer. There was a glow to him.

A few of the seated folks looked over at me, their faces bending back to normal from smiles. “Relax and have a bite to eat. A man should have a full stomach before he goes to it.”

I said, “And what about the horses?”

“They should eat too,” Hute said.

Everyone laughed again.