I stayed with them Creek until the spring of ’69. After I recovered, I done some hunting to pay my keep, and I helped out with the spring planting, and while I was sure glad to lend them people a hand, I proved to myself I was like a Cheyenne when it came to farming.

Actually, though, that civilized life in the eastern Nations was more dangerous than you might think from a look at them peaceful little farms thereabout. That Creek family, seeing my blue uniform, took me for a deserter, a common type in the Nations. And liked me for it, because they had old cause against the Army from the time of Jackson, and then during the War most of the Creek had been Reb sympathizers, which is a laugh considering how they had been kicked out of Georgia, but what they liked about the South was slavery. Anyway, when the War was done, the Federal Government punished them, and the Choctaw, Cherokee, etc., by taking away the western half of Indian Territory, which had earlier belonged to them tribes, and making it into reservations for such as the Cheyenne. From which followed in natural progression the Battle of the Washita.

What I started to say, though, was that there was considerable Army deserters in the eastern Nations, along with freed slaves who now didn’t have no work, and former Reb soldiers in a similar situation, and Indians what had gone bad, also fugitives from justice back in the States, bully-boys, cutthroats, and just plain rotten fellows. There was in addition every sort of breed in them parts: some being part white, Negro, and Indian all at the same time, with the worst traits of each.

I said it was dangerous living in that part of the country even though you kept to your cabin and cornfield, for gangs of the foregoing was always riding about and murdering people. It was a specially good place to practice that profession, for there wasn’t any local law to speak of. Generally, if you rubbed out a person you hadn’t nobody to get after you but a Federal marshal out of Fort Smith or Van Buren over in Arkansas, where the court was, and they wasn’t active much at this time because the court people had all been Rebel and thus got the boot with the war. A saying went “There ain’t no Sunday west of St. Louie and no God west of Fort Smith.”

Now the center for the rough element was a town in the eastern Creek Nation called Mooskokee, which was where I proceeded upon leaving that family what had befriended me, with a view to getting the stage there and so travel up to Kansas and thence take the Union Pacific out to end-of-track, find Caroline and Frank Delight and cash in my third of our hauling business, for as I have said I needed money. In any event, I could always borrow a bundle off of Frank, for he would now be my brother-in-law.

I walked it to Mooskokee, about forty mile. I didn’t have a cent for stage fare, but over my shoulders I was toting a pack of raccoon skins that I expected to sell once in town, for they make a serviceable cap. Indeed I was wearing one. Well sir, I had reached what I took to be the outlying suburbs, a long muddy hog wallow, lined with ramshackle sties, and I saw an old colored man there, looking for his pigs, and says: “Uncle, could you direct me to the city of Mooskokee?”

He scratches through the sweat-rag on his head and answers: “You has already got almost clear through it.”

“I was just a-looking for the stage line.”

“The station,” he says, “is up the street and around the corner. But if I was you I’d hold off going there at present, for it is in the process of getting robbed, I do believe.”

Sure enough, no sooner had he spoke than a volley of shots sounded from where he pointed and directly a body of men on horseback come tearing around the corner and galloped towards us and would have run us down had we not rolled into a slough alongside the road. I don’t know what was their hurry, for they had nobody chasing them. Somebody had shot the sheriff yesterday, my acquaintance pointed out as we drug ourselves from the mud.

I thanked him and went down to the stage station, which I figured was safe enough now. The agent was lying in a pool of gore, and great holes gaped in the thin board walls where a fellow had been mighty free with a shotgun. Well, I was standing just inside what was left of the place, thinking how it didn’t make much difference to me, on account of I didn’t have the price of a ticket yet anyway, when I heard the noise of horses outside and in busts three very nasty-looking customers, bristling with firearms.

These fellows glare at me with their red eyes and then take in that body of the dead agent, and the one who seemed their leader says to the others: “Told you we was goin’ to be late. Now this no-good bastard has done beat us.”

Then he says to me with hurt pride: “We got the one before, and we would of beat you here this evenin’ hadn’t we been occypied down the road a piece with the stage itself. We robbed it and we burned it and we kilt the driver, we kilt the guard, we kilt the passengers, but one of them was a gal, and so we all _____ her before we kilt her.”

As I say, I never had the price of a fare, anyway. What concerned me at the moment, however, was my lack of a gun, which these skunks would soon notice and then I would join the stiff on the floor. I had to make the most of my time while they was still jealously admiring how they thought I had rubbed out the agent.

“My boys won’t like that,” I says. “They was fixing to get that stage themselves, and I reckon have found it by now and turned back and will want to meet them who stole their thunder.”

“How many boys you got?” says the leader. If he ever would introduce a drop of water to his face, he might have come out fairly good-looking. He was a breed of Indian and white, with fairish hair and thin features but walnut-colored skin. Another was almost black, with straight raven hair gathered in a knot behind. The third looked pure white but was the ugliest mortal I ever seen: had a bad eye, and an old knife cut that when healing had lifted his lip on the right side so you could see his teeth there even when he wasn’t grinning or snarling though it seemed as if he always was.

“Nineteen or twenty,” says I, and turned away right insolent, upon which I knowed they would make up their mind to shoot me in the back or knuckle under. It turned out they was bluffed, for the leader commences to boast.

“I guess you have heerd of me,” he says; “Johnny Jump? I got me quite a rep hereabout for murder and mayhem. Ain’t no marshal ever laid a hand on me, though many have tried. Just last month I blowed the head off one come out of Van Buren. This yeer’s my cousin, Jim Smoker”-pointing to the black-faced fellow-“and the other we call Cockeye. He ain’t got no tongue. Had it shot or tore out. Can’t talk, but my God he is mean.”

I says: “I never heard of you small-time trash. We’re from St. Louie by way of Texas and have just stopped off in this mudhole to get tobacco money. And then on to Kansas, where we figure to cut and shoot and rob and violate from one side of the state to the other.”

Cockeye grunts some and slobbers out of his cut lip. Jim Smoker goes on outside and in a minute I hear him firing his rifle and look out and see he is taking target practice at the curly tail of a wandering hog.

“My cousin,” says Johnny Jump, “ain’t got all his buttons, but he is real useful at killin’ and stealin’. I was a-thinking maybe us fellows could join your boys. I would shore like to rob and murder and the rest of what you said up in Kansas.” He looked like a kid who was begging his Daddy to take him fishing, his eyes bright and wistful. There was something real innocent about Johnny Jump, even likable, I don’t know why. Maybe it was the Indian in him.

In at last reluctantly agreeing to admit him and his boys to my nonexistent gang, I did not intend to travel in their company any further than was necessary. I told them I was to rendezvous with my bunch twenty miles north. They could come along at their own risk.