Chapter 19
Okee
Ikeep the horse at a steady trot, slowing only when the snow lies deep. The wind stays in my face the whole way, stinging my eyes raw, but I do not stop. Every mile I cover is one mile closer to a path out of this mess.
By midmorning the ridges fall away and the land opens. Pasture stretches brittle and brown under a low, leaden sky. A few rail fences sag under frost. Smoke lifts from chimneys in thin gray tendrils before the wind sweeps it away.
The last stretch is the worst. The track disappears beneath blown snow, and I have to trust the horse to feel out firm ground. My fingers are so numb I cannot tell whether I still hold the reins until the leather bites my palm.
Then the tvlwv, a tribal town, comes into view: a sparse scattering of weathered wooden buildings set far apart, their roofs dusted with snow, smoke curling from cook fires. Oak and hickory sting the nose.
Okmulgee. The Mvskoke Nation’s capital.
I ride down the main track between the buildings, hooves crunching over frozen ruts. A group of Mvskoke men pass, kept warm under vibrant blankets that stand out against the stark white and gray. The wind batters them, their voices low and flattened by the cold. I greet them.
“Hensci!”
They slow their pace and I ask after the government office.
One of them jerks his chin toward a two-story log house set apart from the rest. He answers me in Mvskoke.
The government keeps a room in the Council House now.
It stands beyond a stretch of dirt and dead grass powdered with crystalline snow. I thank them and ride on.
Inside the council house, men stand waiting with petitions folded tight in their hands.
Others gather near the doorway in low conversation, Mvskoke and English mingling beneath the murmur of the stove.
At one long table, clerks sort papers into neat stacks—petitions, notices, copies of treaty language, I assume.
The government man’s business has been set up in one borrowed corner.
A coffee pot gone black at the spout sits on a side table beside a plate of cold biscuits and an open cigar box already half emptied.
The room smells of woodsmoke, tobacco, and leather.
I remove my hat. As I make my way through the crowd, my last visit with my father begins to play again in my head.
“A man of twenty-five ought to have a wife. Children. All you do is wander. It’s dishonorable, Okee.”
It’s been years since then. I sat in Father’s den in a leather chair and listened while he named all the ways I had wasted my potential and disappointed him.
“And instead of a young lady, you bring a man home to our family table.”
“He has no family.”
“Then perhaps he should find a wife himself and start one.”
He did not know Boone and I had already lain beneath the stars one summer night on Whiskey Island, lightning bugs drifting around us like tiny, flickering flames.
My hand in his, Boone whispered, “I’d find you in the dark, through smoke, in the fire of hell if that’s where fate consigns us.
Ain’t nothin’ ever keepin’ me from you, Okee, long as I live. ”
How my knees had gone soft. I had only reached over, caught his collar, and pulled that sweet, beautiful man’s mouth to mine like my life depended on it.
But my father would never know. I never expected plain acceptance from him, and I never meant to shame him with the truth. The least he could do was accept the lie I offered him: Boone and I are business partners, guiding people safely across the Territory. Bachelors and messmates, nothing more.
“Okee,” I hear him call.
I turn toward the sound of his baritone.
He is grayer now. Thinner. I force a smile and walk to him.
His face looks like my own, save for my mother’s complexion, hair, and eyes.
Sometimes I study my reflection and wonder how it is possible that we could be so alike and yet so painfully different.
It’s unsettling. The face of a man I love and hate in equal measure looking back at me.
I simply greet him as I was taught.
“Mr. Collins, I trust you’re well.”
There is something tentative about his posture as he sizes me up. “To what do I owe this surprise visit?”
The room is too warm. The air feels heavy in my lungs.
“May we please speak in private?”
Pausing a moment, he assesses me with a concerned look, then sweeps his face around each corner of the room. He drops a firm hand on my shoulder. “Come.”
He steers me through the crowd like I am a boy again, fingers set hard enough to bruise if I pull away. At the far end of the hall he opens a narrow door and ushers me into his office.
The room is plain, but full of authority: a stack of ledgers, map rolls in one corner, a dispatch box on the desk, and an American flag pinned to the timber wall behind a small plaque that reads ALFRED COLLINS.
My father does not offer me a seat. He takes his own, folds his hands, and says, “I’m surprised you would travel. The weather has a habit of turning quickly as of late.”
“Yes, I know. But it’s urgent. It could not wait.”
“What sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”
The words land without flourish. He leans back a fraction.
I had come for something simple enough in my own mind: Lula’s statement taken down officially, some government protection between Hollister and the rope, and one man in this Territory willing to treat a printed reward from a rich company as accusation instead of proof.
I take the flyer from my coat and lay it on the desk, sliding it toward him.
The old chair before his desk complains as I settle into it. Clicking his tongue, my father picks up the paper, studies it, nods once, and sets it down again. Then he leans back once more, hands clasped over his middle. His stony expression is worse than anger.
My throat tightens, but I keep my face still. “It isn’t true,” I say, careful not to sound too forceful. I tell him as much of the truth as I believe he could tolerate, talking in circles and squares so as to avoid reminding him of Boone’s existence, and yet he arrives at his judgment all the same.
“I told you this would happen if you kept company with that hillbilly.”
“Please.” The word comes out sharper than I mean. I drag a breath through my nose. “We have committed no crime.”
My father’s brows lift, just enough to show he does not believe me.
I go on, because if I stop speaking, he’ll believe I have rested my case. “The man framing us does not know one woman survived. We have kept her safe. In the cabin.”
For a moment he says nothing. His ring clicks softly on the desk as he taps one finger.
Then a short, disbelieving breath escapes him, like I have handed him a story too ridiculous to believe.
“You follow that man into sin,” he says. He does not raise his voice. He never has to. He lets the contempt simmer between us and the reasons come surging back. The reason why I haven’t seen him in years.
The reason why he will never truly know me.
Never even try.
My hands tighten around the brim of my hat in my lap. I have the urge to stand, but standing would only show emotion, and emotion is weakness. It would make me a boy again in his eyes. I force myself still.
“You do not know him,” I say.
My father’s mouth tightens. “I know exactly what he is to you,” he says. “And I know what perversions have done to my only son.”
My pulse hammers once, hard.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“God will forgive you, Okee. Return to Him. Return to your family. Leave that life behind.” His gaze drifts over me. “You came here because you are afraid,” he says. “You should be.”
I hate how my heart listens to him, even when I've trained my mind to steel myself through his appeals to my family, my faith. I should have known any help he offered would come tied to a leash.
“I came because there is a woman who survived,” I say. “Because there is a man with money enough to buy badges and bury bodies, and because if we do not stop him, he will keep killing until the only story left is his own.”
At that, my father’s eyes narrow, not in sympathy, but in calculation.
“Once the weather clears, the woman may be placed under federal protection. Your own part in this may yet be managed. But if you want my help,” he says, “you must sever all ties with that man. I will not spend my name protecting the life you have chosen.”
That is the cost, then.
Lula handed over. Boone abandoned. Myself placed neatly back under my father’s hand like a mislaid handkerchief tucked back into his pocket.
But Hollister would still be out in the Territory with his money, his hired men, and his influence. Cleared or not, Boone and I would still be the men who saw what happened. Lula would still be the woman who lived.
He must take my silence for consideration, because he presses on, sweetening the offer.
“You are an educated man,” he says. “A man of standing. A man who could be of real use here. To the government. To your people.”
I glare at him. “My people. Because if I stand behind whatever bargain the government puts before the Mvskoke, they’ll believe it’s safe.”
His face gives nothing away.
“I am well aware of the value you place on that,” I say.
“It is exactly why your offers have never interested me. I did not come here for work. I did not come to be absolved.” My voice tightens despite myself.
“I came for help from someone with a conscience. Someone who I thought might do what was right. Not only for me. For Boone. For Lula. No matter your personal feelings.”
“My only concern is you, my son. That you return to your family, and to your faith.”
“I never left my faith. I left you.”
The blow lands. His face hardens.
“Yet here you are again.” He shakes his head.
“If Hollister is as dangerous as you claim, then accusing him openly is the surest way to get that woman killed. And you with her.” His lip curls faintly.
“The United States is in the middle of important negotiations with the Five Tribes. This is not the hour to throw a timber concern and a massacre into the middle of it because you continue to behave like a petulant child.”
My jaw aches from how hard I hold it shut. The defensiveness rises, hot and humiliating, and I hate that he can still summon it in me with a sentence.
“Then keep it simple,” I say, measuring each word. “Send a marshal to the cabin. He can take her statement there. He can escort her to safety. See justice done.”
“No marshal worth the badge will go ranging half frozen through the Territory in this weather for your sake,” he says, as if the notion is absurd.
“The roads are half lost, the rivers mean, and winter has only begun.
You rode in on foolishness and luck. You will not ride out on it.
You should stay here, in Okmulgee, until it is passable. "
I barely made it here myself through wind and snow. The three of us will not be safe making a long journey now, not with the sky falling and Hollister’s men still sniffing after us.
“I cannot abandon them there. I have to go back before the season turns worse.”
He leans back in his chair, the wood creaking beneath him. He picks up his pen and turns it between his fingers once, twice.
“Then you have until the first show of spring,” he says. “When the roads clear and the weather eases, bring the woman here and make your choice. After that, I will assume you have chosen otherwise, and I will not interfere with what follows.”
My father rises first, in a way that confirms that his is the last word on the subject. He opens the office door with the same practiced motion he uses to end a hearing.
I rise, nod once, and step past him.
“Until spring,” he says. “Please, be careful.”
Then he steps back into his office and closes the door with a soft, final click.
Heat floods my face as I stand outside it, fists clenched. I turn away before I do something foolish and stalk back through the main room, where men still wait with their folded papers, as though the world might truly be made safer by men like my father giving orders in it.
Beside the cigar box on the side table sits an amber decanter with two fingers gone from it. I take the bottle first, then the box, tucking both beneath my coat. No one stops me. One man glances up, then looks away again.
Outside, the wind snaps, sharp as a whip.
I move stiffly to my horse and shove the stolen things into my saddlebag. The bottle knocks hard against the leather. I drag it back out, take a long swallow, and return it there.
Then I swing into the saddle and turn the horse toward the open land, away from the council house and the door that has just shut me out.