The Legend of Eli Crow
Copyright© 2018 by JRyter
Chapter 26
A week after the marshals returned from their last trip, Eli rode across the river to Tulsa with Little Eli and the other boys and girls. The young’uns thought they were almost grown now, getting to ride the big high stepping horses all the way across the river with him and going to the post office at Perryman’s. He gave them enough money to buy some candy and even some gum, for the first time in their lives. The boys saw some baseball bats, gloves, and balls and each of them wanted baseball equipment, so they could play ball. Eli gathered enough equipment so they could go over to Iron Hammer’s and play with his boys.
“Eli, these are the real thing, they’re not for kids to play with. They were brought to Tulsa for a men’s baseball team they’re planning to start up,” the man told him when they laid all the equipment on the counter.
“That’s alright, I want my boys to learn how to play baseball. I saw a game once bein’ played in Fort Smith and I knew then I wanted my boys to play when they got old enough. You just need to order them other players some more equipment to play with,” Eli told him as he lay two one hundred dollar bills on the counter.
When Eli asked for his mail, he had three letters and some more mail he put in his saddlebag.
From there, they went by the telegraph office at the depot. The young’uns went in too. They wanted to see what Eli had been trying to tell them about a telegraph machine that passed words through the wires and got more words back when someone in Kansas City talked on the other end.
When they walked in, the first thing they heard was the tap-tap, tap, tap-tap, tap of the telegraph clicker. They ran to the counter where the man was tapping on his machine then waiting. In a minute or so, his machine would tap back at him. They stood with their chins on the counter, lined up in front of the windows, chewing their gum and grinning as they watched this most amazing thing.
When the man was through he turned to Eli.
“Marshal, I got one here for you from Smitty, that came this morning,” he said as he handed it to him.
Three weeks stop
Four of us stop
Three trees stop
Ship COD stop
“Thanks, this is what I was waitin’ on,” Eli told him with a big grin on his face.
“You ‘n Smitty gonna plant some trees up there on your place I reckon?” he asked.
“Yep, bunches of ‘em and I hope they bear some good fruit too,” Eli said as he grinned.
“Mister?” Little Eli spoke to the man.
“Yes son, what can I do for you?”
“Tell us how that tap-tap machine works.”
“Well, it works by an electrical pulse and I have to know a secret code where each tap or tap-tap makes a dot or dash on the other end that stands for a letter of the alphabet.”
“Why is it tapping now and you’re not tapping back?” Kia asked.
“That message is going down to Muskogee, to the depot there.”
“How do you know when it’s for you then?” Michi asked.
“I have my own tap-tap signal that lets me know if it’s coming here.”
“Man, that is really going some. Who ever thought up all this?” Caleb asked.
“A man by the name of Samuel Morse invented this machine and him and Alfred Vail thought up the code we use, it’s called the Morse Code.”
“Can anyone learn that Morse Code?” Little Eli asked.
“Sure you can. I could get you a copy of it if you want me to.”
“Better get a dozen copies, I’ll pay for ‘em,” Eli told him.
“I can get them free ... they’ll be here on the next train.”
“Get ‘em then. We’ll be back in a day or two. Who do we see about buyin’ train tickets to Kansas City?”
“The man over there at the ticket window.”
“Yes sir, Marshal, how can I help you?” The ticket man asked as he looked down at all the Indian kids lined up at the window grinning up at him.
“I need twenty two tickets to Kansas City, then we’ll go on to Boones Crossing, Kansas from there.”
“Will they all be adults?”
“No, ten will be these young’uns.”
“Marshal, that’s gonna run you fifty-two dollars, by you getting your ride free, for being a marshal.”
“There’ll be three more marshals on that train, other than me and my family.”
“Then let me re-figure; that will be thirty-two dollars, Marshal. When do you want them for?”
“When we catch the train.”
“I meant what date, Marshal. The train heads to Kansas City on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday.”
“We’ll leave here this Sunday and we’ll come back next Friday. But we need to take another train over to Boones Crossing, Kansas on Wednesday, then come home.”
“So you’ll need roundtrip tickets from Kansas City to there too?”
“Yes, both ways.”
“That will be seventy-nine dollars and fifty cents for eight roundtrip adult tickets, and ten roundtrip underage tickets, and four U.S. Marshal free passes.”
“That sounds about right, there’ll be twenty two of us,” Eli said as he handed the man a new hundred dollar bill.
“The train is scheduled to leave here at nine o’clock on Sunday morning, Marshal, we’ll see you then.”
“Will there be one of them diner cars on this train?”
“No, we’re not big enough down this way yet to have one. They say in a year or so we may get us one. We’ll be running all the way down to Katy, Texas by then.”
“If I see the railroad boss in Kansas City, I’ll tell him we need one sooner.”
“Yes Marshal, we’d appreciate that.” The man looked at the tall Indian Marshal to see if he was kidding. He was serious.
The man rolled the tickets off his roll and stamped them ‘KC’, then put Sunday’s date on them. He stamped ‘PASS’ on four of them, then folded them all together at the scored ends and handed them to Eli. He reached for his roll of tickets again and rolled off the same number, stamping these in the same manner, for the round trip to Boones Crossing from Kansas City and back.
“Are we ready to go home now, Daddy?” Lee Yu asked as she sat on her horse. She and Lilly Beth had to have help getting on, but they could jump to the ground from their stirrups when they get off. The boys nearest them when they mounted always helped them on their horses.
“I am, all of you about ready?”
“We sure are, Daddy. Would you let all of us ride over to see our friends, and play some ball, if we promise to come back early?” Little Eli asked.
“You mean by yourselves?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Watch out for your sisters and you can go. Be home before dark and act like you got manners.”
“We will, Daddy. I’ll make sure the boys behave,” Lee Yu said.
“You and Lilly Beth behave too or I’ll get them skinny little butts when you get home.”
“Bye, Daddy, we love you,” they all yelled as he turned up the ridge toward home. They rode slowly over the ridge toward Iron Hammers, and as soon as they looked back and didn’t see him, Lee Yu yelled.
“Let’s go.”
They poked their horses and rode the high stepping horses hard all the way to the Cherokee village, yipping and yelling and laughing all the way.
Eli walked in with his mail and sat at the table with the women. They were drinking coffee and peeling potatoes for supper. Tin Yu brought him a big cup of coffee and poured some for all the others. When she sat back down, Eli took the tickets out of his pocket and tossed them on the table.
Clarissa looked up from her writing and saw the tickets ... she knew what they were, and smiled. The others had never seen a ticket before and just looked at them as the folded tickets unfurled a little, as if they were alive.
“When are we going, Eli?” Clarissa asked, wanting to help him play his game.
“Sunday, we leave at nine o’clock.”
“Eli?” Rose said and he looked at her.
“Are we going to Boones Crossing?”
“Yup, but first we’re all going to stay at that big hotel in Kansas City, we stayed at years ago.”
“OH MY LORD, we’re going to Kansas City,” she said and laughed.
“Eli, we all going?” Tin Yu asked.
“Every last one of us ... Duncan, Juni, Joe and Sissy, Moses and Suh, and all the wild ass Crow kids.”
“Eli, we’ve never been anywhere like that, maybe Catt and me need to stay here,” Eva said.
Eli jumped up from the table and spilled his coffee.
“All of you are my women and all of you have my kids, and we’re all going. Don’t you know how much I love all of you? I’d never leave one or two of you and go somewhere like this. We’ll have the best time in our lives and we’ll have done what I promised Mary we’d all do before she passed,” Eli said, as he walked around the table, kneeling between Catt and Eva.
“Eli, I’m sorry I said that. I was just afraid.”
“Eva, you have no reason to be afraid, not anymore. None of you do. We moved over here to be away from bad people ... we’re a family and we’ll always be one.”
“Eli, Tin Yu know how Eva and Catt feel. We never go place like that, we afraid we not be welcome. Maryanne Crow just a baby too, maybe not like going that far on a train,” Tin Yu said and Rose grabbed her in a hug.
“You’ll be welcome ... we all will, now stop this. We’re all Eli’s women, and we’ll go where he wants to take us and we’ll hold our heads high and we’ll go in them fancy shops and buy all the fine clothes they have. Maryanne Crow better get used to going, we’ll all be going places soon. Eli Crow said we’re sitting on a gold mine. If Eli says we will be rich one day, we better buy new handbags while we’re there too, because he’s gonna fill them up for us,” Rose said as the women smiled, then laughed aloud at what she said.
They were all laughing by the time Rose finished talking, and began making plans to pack clothes for all of them.
“Just pack for one day, we’re goin’ shopping for all of you, the baby, and the wild ass Crow kids some new clothes,” Eli told them.
“How long will it take us to get there, Eli?”
“About seven or eight hours the man said.”
“So if we leave at nine, we’ll be there before dark and get hotel rooms,” Rose told them.
“Goodness, it will take at least five rooms,” Clarissa said.
“I hope they’ll have that many empty rooms close together. I’d hate for us to be scattered all over that big hotel, we’d never find those wild Crow kids,” Rose said.
“What was the name of that hotel, Rose?” Eli asked.
“The Wyandotte Hotel.”
“I need to go back to the depot and send a telegram to them and tell them when we’ll be there, and be sure they save us some rooms,” Eli said and jumped up from the table.
“We better start packing then, today’s Friday,” Clarissa said.
Eli went out and saddled his stud then rode back across the river to the depot. When he walked in the depot, the telegraph operator looked up and smiled.
“You forget something, Marshal?”
“I need to telegraph The Wyandotte Hotel in Kansas City and tell them to hold ten rooms close together for me and my family starting Sunday through Tuesday.”
“I’ll get that right out, Marshal. They usually have messengers there to deliver the messages. We should hear something back in thirty minutes or less,” the man said as he finished writing down what Eli wanted, and started tapping his key.
He read from his note and put Eli Crow U S Marshal at the bottom of it.
Twenty minutes later the clicker started again and the man bent over, writing the code down. It stopped and he tapped back to them to clear the line and confirm receipt.
“Here you go, Marshal, ten rooms on the top floor. I hope you and your family have a good time up there. You ought to take all of them kids to a baseball game up there too, Marshal. I went up to the home office once and took my wife and kids. We went to the ball park and watched a double header. My kids still talk about that and they’re grown now.”
“Will they know where the ball park is when we get there?”
“Just tell them at the hotel desk you want to go to a ball game, and how many tickets ... they’ll do the rest.”
“I need to send a telegram to Fort Smith now. Can you get one over there from here?”
“Sure we can,” he answered and took Eli’s message. He sent the message and they chatted for a few minutes, before his clicker went off.
“Mr. Whitehead said he’ll be there, with all who’ll come with him.”
“Thanks,” Eli said and tossed a ten dollar bill on the counter.
“Just make sure you get all my messages to me if I’m not down here.”
“I’ll do it, Marshal, and thanks.”
When Eli returned to the house, the women were upstairs. He could hear them laughing and making plans for the train ride to Kansas City and on to Boones Crossing. It was good to hear laughter in the house. There had been very little since Mary passed. Eli still couldn’t bring himself to say she died, that sounded so final and it hurt too much just to think about it.
The first thing he did was get out his dictionary that Jon David had given him so he could use the right words to make out his reports and know all the legal terms of the law. He took his maps and his warrant for T.F. Miles out and his report sheet. This was the first one he’d ever filled out, since they had always reported straight to Jefferson, Judge Parker, or the jailer in Fort Smith jail and given them the details of the trip and the arrest.
At the top was a place for the date and Eli put that in, after looking at the calendar Rose kept in the kitchen.
He could hardly believe it was already April 25th of 1884. Hard to believe I’m almost twenty eight years old, he thought. Then he thought of Mary passing before she was thirty.
Next was a place for his name and he put, Eli Crow, U.S. Marshal out of Tulsa, Indian Territory.
Then he looked to see a place to put where he was from and knew whoever looked at this, could figure it out.
Names of all assigned to this warrant:
Eli put his name, Duncan’s name, Moses’ name, and Joe’s name.
Person making initial order of arrest:
Here he put Eli Crow United States Marshal, though they didn’t get a chance to arrest anyone before the shooting started.
Place of arrest and/or serving of warrant:
Eli put Neosho River, northeast Indian Territory, for lack of a town.
Warrant issued for:
Eli put T.F. Miles, then saw where he was supposed to put his crimes, so he just continued with, who was wanted for stealing lands from lawful citizens, harboring criminals, horse killers, rapists, and thieves.
Arrest detail and summary statement of arresting official:
Having just buried my wife Mary a few weeks prior, I set out with my fellow marshals toward the northeast from Tulsa, Indian Territory. In three day’s time, we were at the Spring River and made camp there. From there we went looking for the whereabouts of one T.F. Miles – himself a part Cherokee from his own mother – such as I. We knew by the warrant that he would have ten mean and despicable men in his employ, so we were ever watchful all the way from the banks of the Spring River to where we walked upon two saddle horses with blood stained saddles.
With much trepidation, we carefully walked onward until we saw two unclothed young women back in the bushes. They were on the ground with their hands tied together over their heads as they lay on their backs. I knew from prior arrests and criminal scene investigating, these young women had been raped and beaten and cut up bad. Upon closer inspection we, Moses Kidd and myself, saw they had their throats cut from side to side. They were dead and had been dead for a while. Being even more watchful and even more disgusted by this sight, we left the young women with plans to come back later and bury them. We tied their horses up and walked on east-northeast on the trail until we came upon a well-kept spread with fine houses and horse barns.
We tied our horses in the thick brush back to the west of the main barn and snuck into the back of said horse barn where 14 horses were stalled. We watched the house and grounds for anything or anybody and saw 2 young black girls come out of the main house with a clothes basket and go to the clothes line. Then an old black man, whose name we soon learned was Isaiah Haight, came to the barn. I took him down from behind and dragged him to the tack room where I made myself known to him, along with my fellow marshals.
I informed him that I intended to arrest his bossman and he was glad. I asked how many men his bossman had in his employment and he told me ten of the meanest, vilest, and hardened men he’d ever seen. I asked where they were and he told me they had left early and had not returned as yet. I asked where they’d go first upon returning and he said to the watering trough to tie up their horses. Just about then, Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Johnson, who has a keen ear, and who happens to be my son-in-law, heard horses coming hard toward the barn, where we was all hunkered down and waiting.
When the men rode up, they had two of our horses with them. They hollered for Isaiah and called him names which I won’t repeat here in writing, but it was about him being black amongst other things of a threatening and bodily harm nature. When he didn’t speak back, we heard a gunshot that sounded like it was up close and smothered against something. The next thing I saw was my big black stud horse I had bought when I first started marshaling over in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1874. My horse fell dead toward the door opening so that I was looking right down at his bloody head. I became very angry and upset with whoever had killed my horse. I still to this day don’t know how a man can just kill a horse like that.
My friend and fellow Marshal, Duncan, had his horse killed up in Parkinsville, Kansas by a dumb kid who later came after my family down in Fort Smith after breaking jail there. I killed him while he tried to hurt my sister Rose, who was herself raped as a young girl. Any way when Marshal Duncan lost his horse to a horse killer we both had a hard time overcoming that anger. After all of that previous anger of the same sort, I was in no mind to let another horse killer get away with this. I stepped out of the barn door and they all saw me. I made myself known to them and that they were under arrest, like I have always done as part of my job as a United States Marshal.
There was eight of them and they started to pull their guns on me. I killed three in self defense as fast as I could, to bring the odds back closer to my favor. Then Marshal Duncan cut two of them down with both barrels of double-aught buckshot, through a window, in my defense, as they were about to kill me. Deputy Moses Kidd ran after another one of the men who was running away, killing him in self defense when the man turned and took aim back at Deputy Moses Kidd. Deputy Joe Johnson ran out and around the corner of the barn after another man and the man shot back at Deputy Joe Johnson twice. Joe Johnson stepped out and killed him dead, in self defense also, with three shots to his head as the man raised his pistol to shoot at him again. I thought the last man alive, of the eight, was gonna give his self up when he raised his hands. All at once he reached for a gun and I killed him with three fast shots to his head.
I saw right away that Deputy Joe Johnson’s horse and Deputy Moses Kidd’s horses was not at the barn and he, Deputy Joe Johnson, became alarmed, fearing they had already killed or were about to kill his big Paint horse. He ran through the barn and leapt the back door like a deer, then cleared the fence in a long leap. He ran to where we’d tied all our horses early on, out in the brush. Not being there myself, I had to rely on Deputy Joe Johnson’s description of the events at the time. He told me when he got back to the barn, that he killed the two remaining bad men just as they jumped him and attempted to kill him and was about to kill his horse. Deputy Joe Johnson is not a man to take lightly, things like a threat against his life or his horse’s life. So he killed them both in self defense.
When we’d done all that, Isaiah Haight told us where his bossman was and we went in the house after him. We captured the man, T.F. Miles, and he wanted to sign over his estate to his loyal and devoted man servant, Isaiah Haight and his woman Nellie, before he was took away to jail for years and years to come for all his crimes. He signed the deed over to Isaiah Haight, his man servant, and the bill of sale also, made out for one dollar. He asked the four of us U S Marshals to be witnesses to the deeding of his lands and estates to his man servant and we did. Then T.F. Miles asked to excuse himself. Since we already had him hooked together with chains on his hands, I allowed him to relieve his bladder and he went in his room and crawled under his bed where he shot himself in the mouth with a two barrel load of 00, [that means double-aught] buckshot. We ran in there and he was still kicking and we thought he was about to shoot us, seeing as how the bed covers covered him where he lay under the bed. We emptied our pistols into him then dragged him out to find that he was already dead.
Isaiah and his women buried him while Deputies Joe Johnson and Moses Kidd went back to bring the dead girls and live horses back so the girls could be buried too.
We left and came home.
Signed:
Eli Crow United States Marshal Tulsa, Indian Territory April 25, 1884
Eli signed his statement, swearing the content to be true and verifiable and read back over his account of the arrest attempt. Satisfied with his report, he folded it, putting it in the envelope with the warrant and sealed it. He was satisfied with his explanation of why no one was arrested.
Eli walked out to meet with the Barkley brothers and tell them of the family plans.
“William, we’ll all be gone starting Sunday morning, then coming back home the next Friday. I want you and your brothers to watch out for things like you did before we all moved up here.”
“You know we will, Marshal. Where y’all goin’, back to Fort Smith for a visit?”
“I’m taking all my family up to Boones Crossing, Kansas, to let my boy, Eli see his grandpa and grandma that he’s never seen. We’ll be spending a couple of days in Kansas City too while we’re gone. My womenfolk have never been off like that and I wanted to do something for ‘em.”
“That sure sounds like a fine trip. I told Ben and George that if we watched what we got, like you told us to, and get us up a few head of cattle, we might make us a trip off to another place one day, just to say we been somewhere.”
“William, can you and your brothers keep somethin’ private and not be telling it all over, if I tell you something?”
“Sure, Marshal. We never talk to others anyway. I reckon it comes from when we was outlaws.”
“You ever heard of a oil well?”
“No, what is oil?”
“Oil is something that’s buried under the ground. It’s the same thing you see seepin’ up through all them black water pools we got all over this place.”
“Is it good for anythin’ other than killin’ ticks?”
“Yep, sure is. It can be pumped from under the ground through a big oil well and sold for burning in lamps and furnaces and in steam boilers to make electric lights.”
“Marshal, you tellin’ me that you aim to build you some oil wells and pump oil out of the ground and sell it?”
“We sure are William and I reckon you’n your brothers will have some of that oil on your new lands too.”
“Will we stop raisin’ cows when we do this?”
“No, they said we just keep right on raisin’ cows, that they don’t pay a bit of mind to the oil wells.”
“Marshal, tell me, does a man make a lot of money doin’ that?”
“Smitty, the blacksmith, told me we were sittin’ on a gold mine.”
“Marshal, you don’t reckon ... do you?”
“He’s told me all about it and he’s gone back east to see some his friends about coming out here and show us how to make it all work. They’ll be here in three weeks with some stuff to start drillin’.”
“Marshal, you reckon me and my brothers will make some money too, or was it just on your place where the gold mine was?”
“It’s all over, William. You got them black water pools too, back yonder on your lands. I’ll tell you another thing and you might have seen this already happenin’. We’re havin’ a railroad spur built out yonder that’ll come half way over to the houses and we’ll start sellin’ cows and loadin’ them right here on our place. We’re gonna need some big corrals like y’all had down in Texas and some of them loadin’ chutes too, to get them cows on the train cars.”
“Marshal, you always got new things goin’ on in your head and the more we’re around you, the more we like it here. Me and my brothers have helped build them corrals and loadin’ chutes down in Old Tascosa. We could hire some men and get started on them as soon as the railroad men mark out where the spur will be.”
“They already got it marked out William, you need to ride over there and take a look at it. If I was you, I’d build them cattle pens and loadin’ chutes back this way toward this end of the spur. I figure we’ll all be loadin’ oil up on the rest of it before the year is out. I figure we’ll need two windmills there too, William. We want them cows to drink a belly full of water before they leave so they’ll weigh more,” he grinned.
“Marshal, if all this turns out like you’re sayin’, me ‘n my brothers and our wives are gonna make us a trip like yours this time next year. We never been nowhere and our wives never even been off the reservation until we married them. I want to do things for my family like you do for yours, Marshal.”
“You just help us put all this together and keep it hushed up to all the outsiders. Next year, we’ll get Iron Hammer and all his family, you and your brothers and all y’alls families and me and my family together and we’ll all go to St. Louis for a week or two.”
“Marshal, I feel my eyes waterin’, just listenin’ to all that. You can count on me ‘n my brothers. We’ll do more’n our part and you can bet we’ll watch out for your place here next week too. You want me to see Williams down at the lumber yard about the posts and rails for the corrals?”
“Y’all take care of all that, William. When you get ‘em built, we’ll all use ‘em, you’n Iron Hammer too. Just tell Williams down at the lumber mill that I’ll come by and settle up when we get it all built. Just be quiet about all this other we talked about, and tell Williams we’re building more cattle pens here at the house. We don’t want to have folks stompin’ all over up here and meddlin’.”
The women bathed all the young’uns on Saturday night as usual, and finally got them to bed. Then the women all bathed and changed the water for the men.
Sunday, April 27, 1884 Tulsa, Indian Territory
They were all up at daylight, getting breakfast cooked and the family fed. William and his brothers brought three wagons over to carry all of them down to the depot. They left at eight o’clock to be sure and get there on time.
The eight women were the only ones not dressed in buckskins. Even Sissy was dressed in a very fine dress her mother, Mary, had made her. Suh, Juni, and Tin Yu were decked out in finery also and even they knew they looked good. Eva and Catt were dressed in identical dresses made by Rose and Mary earlier in the year after they moved to Tulsa. Rose and Clarissa looked like royalty in the dresses they had made themselves. They all wore store bought hats they’d gotten in Fort Smith for a special occasion. This occasion was as special as it gets.
At eight thirty sharp, the train rolled in from Muskogee, whistle screaming, steam blowing out the sides of the big engine, and brakes screeching, as it rolled slowly to a stop with the two Pullman cars at the passenger loading dock. There were only seven cars, with a coal car, two box cars, two passenger cars, an empty flat car and the caboose.
Eli stood back on the higher level of the dock where the luggage was and counted heads. He counted twice, because the boys kept moving and looking and exploring all over the place. Lee Yu and Lilly Beth held hands with Kia and Michi and never let go until they were seated in the passenger car. The four younger girls sat together and they felt like they were as big as any of the girls they saw on the train that day.
The leather seats were back to back and the women put the boys all facing each other, which is just what they wanted. Little Eli sat beside Caleb and Micah – facing Pike, Isaac, and Ezra.
The women sat two to a seat facing each other with Clarissa sitting next to Tin Yu as she held Maryanne Crow, because Tin Yu was the most nervous and Clarissa had ridden a train before. They were facing Suh and Juni and that was the way they wanted it too. Rose sat with Sissy, facing Catt and Eva as they all smiled and turned to laugh at the rest of the family.
When the women of the family saw four other women in the car, dressed for a Sunday trip, each of them felt at ease. They were dressed as nice as any woman on the train. That was important to them since they’d never been to Kansas City, except for Clarissa and Rose that is. Joe and Eli sat side by side, facing Duncan and Moses.
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