The Arrow Keeper’s Song (36 page)

As the engineer and a flagman climbed out of the locomotive and prepared to take on water for the engine from a nearby tower, a stowaway dislodged himself from among the massive spools and dropped down to the rail bed.

Tom Sandcrane slung his saddlebags over his right shoulder and started down the wheel-rutted dirt road that led into Cross Timbers. The presence of the depot was the first surprise Sandcrane encountered, but it was hardly the last. For weeks he had rehearsed his return to Cross Timbers, picturing in his mind's eye how it would be, walking down Main Street, the center of attention, Seth Sandcrane's errant son come home. He pictured the scores of familiar faces filing from their homes and businesses as he made his way through town, muttering to themselves, speculating as to the reason for his visit.

Just as Tom's imagination had concocted an elaborate drama, so reality came as quite a shock. Cross Timbers had grown. Businesses lined two streets that crisscrossed one another in the heart of town, Main and Center. Wagons and carriages, pedestrians and horsemen, crowded the streets and walkways in the midmorning light.

The sound of construction underscored the press of humanity as Tom Sandcrane stood alone, unrecognized, a stranger in what had once been his home. A pack of rosy-cheeked white children brushed past him, nearly knocking the solitary figure off his feet. They took no notice of the man but continued in their play, their lives full of the joyous abandonment of youth. South of the intersection and just off of Central, another half-dozen children laughed and dashed and darted in a never-ending game of tag on the playground of a bright new schoolhouse. A prim and pretty redhead leaned out of a window and gently instructed the children that school was dismissed for the day and their mothers were expecting them home. The teacher glanced up and spied the newcomer standing several yards away and instantly appraised him as another roughneck arrived in town and hoping for work out in the oil fields. Indeed, Tom looked the part. He was dressed in Levi's and a faded brown shirt with a fleece-lined denim jacket to blunt the bite of the north wind. His boots were worn and down-at-heel, his black hair hung to his shoulders, a battered military-issue hat shaded his features. A black glove covered his left hand, now clenched into a useless fist. The limited movement in his arm was a condition he had adapted to over the months since mustering out of the Indian Brigade.

Sandcrane touched the brim of his hat. The red-haired schoolmarm did not respond but tucked her head back inside the school, exercising caution in the place of cordiality, and slammed the window shut. Tom shrugged and swept the south side of town with a glance that only reinforced his own sense of displacement. Even the humble cabin he and Seth had shared was gone. The south side of town, like the north, had been taken over by the settlers who had moved in with the opening of the reservation.

An alley became a road that curved out of the town proper and led to a sheriff's office and jail, formerly the home of Willem Tangle Hair's tribal police force. The road extended another two hundred feet farther on before playing out among a collection of houses and gardens with nary a Cheyenne in sight.

Tom continued his trek up Main. The Lavender Hotel was new and Yaquereno's restaurant and other shops along Center Street, like the Paris Boutique, Winnow's Tonsorial, and Benedict Territorial Savings Bank, were foreign to him. It was a relief to find St. Joachim's at the corner of Main and Center. Sandcrane hoped Father Kenneth was still laboring “in the vineyard.” Pressing on, Tom paused before the familiar entrance to Luthor White Bear's mercantile and noticed a black wreath on the door and a “Closed” sign in the window. He wondered who had died.

“Watch it, Injun!” a freight hauler shouted as his wagon rumbled past, churning a cloud of dust in its wake. Tom leaped to the wooden walkway to escape the congestion of the street. He studied the north side of town. Everything looked different—the houses, the businesses. A clinic appeared to have risen from the ashes of the BIA office. It probably offered the services of some hoary old white-haired bastard with a medicine bag in one hand and a whiskey bottle in the other. The sight of Allyn Benedict's old house brought back memories. Tom kept a tight rein on the heartache and disappointments of the past. He was not the same bitter man who had ridden from Cross Timbers on the eve of the land rush. Cuba had changed him, he thought, glancing down at his gloved left hand, a wry, wistful smile on his face.

He focused his attention on the Indian agent's house where he had finally learned the depths of Allyn Benedict's betrayal and the shallowness of Emmiline's affections. An entirely different family, from the looks of the children at play behind the picket fence, lived in the Benedicts' former home. Off to one side of the house a slender, boyish-figured woman in a gray dress and faded apron—obviously not the buxom, rotund Margaret Benedict—attempted to hang out her wash while keeping track of her boisterous young brood. A line of sheets and red flannel long johns, banners of domesticity, fluttered in the cold wind.

Where are my people?
Tom thought.
Where are the Southern Cheyenne? This used to be their community
. He had expected some changes but nothing quite so drastic. Tom quickened his pace through town, making his way past men and women and children, all of whom were strangers to him. He wandered in and out of conversations, local gossip, ruminations about the weather, a heartfelt invitation to Bible school, chatter about the latest fashions at the boutique. Tom sensed a heightened tension in the air. More than once a heated discussion faded as he approached a cluster of townspeople whose weathered white features became veiled with suspicion once they recognized the coppery color of his skin.

An antebellum two-story house befitting some Southern plantation dominated the west end of town. It was an impressive structure built entirely of sandstone fronted by a broad, handsomely appointed porch with Mexican tile steps leading up to two stout mahogany doors. A pair of lions carved out of marble crouched upon pedestals at either corner of the porch in the shadow of two massive whitewashed columns that supported the roof overhead. Tom knew at a glance this could only be the home of Allyn Benedict. Stained-glass windows were set into the mahogany doors, adding yet another touch of stately grandeur to the house.

An office, located a discreet distance from the plantation house, boasted its own telegraph line, strung through town for the oilmen's convenience. “Benedict Exploration and Development” was painted in bold black letters on a sign above the office door. The building apparently housed a law office and a title company, whose signs were painted on the windows in gold leaf. A second, smaller building also constructed of sandstone proved to be the home of the town newspaper, the Cross Timbers
Clarion
, suspiciously in the shadows of Allyn's corporate headquarters.

Torn regarded the two-storied house with a mixture of awe and resentment; Benedict had done quite well for himself, profiteering off those whose interests should have superseded his own. The Indian Agent had arranged the sale of the oil-rich northern range for a fraction of its worth.
I should have stayed and fought him. Well, I'm back
.

A sudden tingling along his spine alerted the Cheyenne, and he lifted his gaze to an upstairs corner window overlooking the street, where he spied a silhouette concealed behind the sun's reflection on the pane of glass. Tom was being watched.

“Hello old
friend,”
the Cheyenne muttered softly. “Just to make certain there were no doubts in your mind …” Tom removed his hat to reveal his features. The Cheyenne nodded toward the window, meeting the concealed man's stare for a few moments. He could have gone to the door and confronted the man and his family. Perhaps later, when he had accomplished the real purpose of his return to Cross Timbers.

Tom ended the game and, with his back to the Benedict house, headed across the street and through a wheel-rutted meadow to Coby Starving Elk's stable and blacksmith shop, nestled at the base of Council Hill.

This was familiar ground and Tom quickened his steps. However, the closer he came, the more he began to realize that something else had changed. The corral held a number of fine-looking horses, and the black smoke curling from the chimney above the smithy indicated the man inside was busy as usual. A flatbed freight wagon loaded with lumbered timber, tin sheeting, and a small wooden barrel marked “nales” blocked the entrance to the blacksmith shop. A pair of sturdy-looking geldings were harnessed to the wagon awaiting the driver.

Tom frowned as he read the sign above the stable doors, “Benedict Co.”
Allyn Benedict casts a long shadow in this territory
, the Cheyenne thought, keeping to the sunlight, his worn boots leaving shallow tracks in the packed earth. Two men emerged from the darkened recesses of the stable as Sandcrane approached. A miniature whirlwind cleared the ground of leaves before him, sweeping up the debris of the previous autumn in a spiraling dance, flashing yellow and brown in winter's rapturous embrace.

The chunky individual in his soot-covered apron, the sleeves of his faded blue workshirt rolled above his elbows, was Coby Starving Elk. And at his side, Father Kenneth, in Levi's, flannel shirt, and denim jacket, drew back as if he had just seen a ghost.

“Well, I'll be damned!” the priest blurted out, then blushed.

“I doubt that, Father.” Tom grinned. “Unless Allyn Benedict has figured out a way to buy paradise and kick out the poor folks like yourself.”

“Tom Sandcrane … I thought you were dead!” Coby exclaimed. He hesitated, debating whether or not the man in the yard was a ghost.

“Only a piece of me,” Tom ruefully replied, raising his gloved hand. “Does that sign over your head mean I can't borrow a horse, Coby? I'd like to ride out to see my father.”

Coby glanced over his shoulder and shrugged. “After the land rush white men showed up by the dozen. They wore fancy clothes and spoke with clever tongues and told of other oil lands. They promised to make us all rich, like Mr. Benedict. So we gave these men our government money to buy these leases in our name. But the white men were the only ones who got rich.”

Coby leaned to one side and spit a stream of tobacco juice, then worked the chaw around in his mouth before continuing his story.

“They disappeared with our money and left us with nothing. So the Cheyenne went to work for Benedict. What else was there to do?” He turned to the priest. “That harness will hold now, Father. You don't need to worry.” He shook Tom's hand as the younger man drew close. Coby, the blacksmith, was a plain and simple man with no talent for subterfuge and wholly unable to conceal his misgivings. He wanted to lend Tom a horse but was loath to risk Allyn Benedict's displeasure.

“Tom can ride with me,” Father Kenneth happily interjected, relieved he could salvage the reluctant blacksmith's pride while assisting the son of Seth Sandcrane. “I'm helping your father build a barn. These supplies are his.”

Tom nodded and climbed onto the wagon seat. He missed the look of concern Coby flashed at the priest. Indeed, Father Kenneth himself choose to ignore the blacksmith's unspoken warning. Benedict owned most of Cross Timbers but not the church, by heaven. The priest climbed up and joined Tom on the seat.

“What has happened here, Father?” Tom Sandcrane asked.

“Progress, my boy. Progress,” the priest bitterly replied.

“And my people. Where are the Southern Cheyenne?”

Father Kenneth took the reins in hand. “I will show you.”

Allyn Benedict patted smooth his graying temples and watched from his window as the priest left town with Tom Sandcrane at his side on the wagon seat. He heard footsteps clatter on the stairs, then become muffled by the carpet in the upstairs hall. Behind him Emmiline, her cheeks flushed, entered her father's bedroom without knocking, the satin-soft ringlets of her black hair flouncing with every step. The room's walls were covered with dark-blue fabric. The centerpiece was a massive four-poster canopy bed. A pastoral scene of buffalo grazing the short-stemmed grasses hung from one wall. A collection of Cheyenne war shields and lances adorned another.

“You will never guess who I saw,” Emmiline said, her elegant features flustered from her recent discovery. “He rode right past the window downstairs. I was having morning tea with mother and looked up …” Her green eyes widened as she realized her father was now standing with his back to the window. “But you must have seen him. Tom Sandcrane has come home.” She seemed to take a kind of special satisfaction in this announcement.

“Yes, I saw him,” Benedict petulantly told his daughter, the fingers of his right hand dramming the walnut surface of his desk. The enthusiasm he detected in her voice troubled him greatly. “I thought he was dead,” the former Indian agent wistfully added.

Last August, upon his own return to Cross Timbers, Willem Tangle Hair had entertained his companions with a colorful account of Tom Sandcrane's exploits in Cuba, ending his tale with Tom's disembarkation from Cuba. By the time the Indian Brigade had departed Caribbean shores and returned to Florida, Tom had already mustered out and disappeared for parts unknown. Tangle Hair's story had been repeated verbatim to Allyn Benedict.

“I wonder how long he intends to stay,” Emmiline said, intrigued by this turn of events and enjoying her father's look of discomfort. She was not proud of the way she had toyed with Sandcrane's affections. One brief glimpse had dredged up old memories, nurtured dormant emotions she had never intended to feel, and had not forgotten.

Benedict removed a kerchief from the pocket of his tailored frock coat and dabbed moisture from his upper lip. Emmiline's attitude annoyed him. And he could still see Tom Sandcrane standing in that street, defiant, insolent, daring. Why had he come back? What was he after? “If he causes trouble, I can personally guarantee his visit will be cut short,” Allyn added in a hushed, harsh tone.