A Death at Crooked Creek: The Case of the Cowboy, the Cigarmaker, and the Love Letter

2. The Parties Ready Their Cases for Trial: 1879–1882

47  ≈ 2 ∆ the parties ready their cases for trial 1879–1882 The Parties Ready Their Cases for Trial fulton’s mill | parkville, missouri | september 1879 The mill owner Fulton has a daughter Polly, a bitty freckled girl too young for school who runs all over the place like a wild Injun, and it is she who comes to tell John Brown that there is a man at the office to see him. He doesn’t see her coming because his attention is elsewhere: he is straining to load a bundle of four-by-fours onto a wagon that is hitched to a balky mule. The animal has already startled once, spilling the load, and so he is using language not suitable for even such an unruly child to hear. Having no regard at the moment for anything much but the mule and the four-by-fours and his profane opinion of them, he nearly jumps when he feels the tug at his pants leg and looks down to see the young’un there. “Your name John Brown?” she says, her head tilted. A front tooth is out and curls of wood shaving cling to the top of her head. “Who wants to know?” he asks. “I don’t know. Some city man is all, in the office. Has a lawman with him, too. My daddy says take you a break and see what he wants.” She spins and runs back toward the creek and the cottonwood trees and the house and office that Fulton has built in their shade. The Parties Ready Their Cases for Trial 48  He can’t leave his task just then, as the mule’s owner is waiting for his load to be finished so he can get home with it. The two men will have to cool their heels. He thinks he knows who they are anyway, at least one of them, and sure enough looking toward the stables he believes he recognizes Buchan’s horse, tied beside another in the yard. The man has pursued him from one workplace to another for the last two months, but Brown had lately started to hope that he had given up. No such luck. When he gets to the office a quarter of an hour later it is just as he thought. W.J. Buchan is standing there in the door; the lawyer is fanning himself with a hat to keep the flies from landing on his head. “This is Deputy Ward,” Buchan says without being asked, pointing the hat toward his companion, who leans against the wall and returns Brown’s glance with a nod. Ward has a no-account look to him, but he does wear a tarnished star pinned onto his jacket, and a sidearm in a holster. “From Wyandotte,” Buchan adds. “He has his orders, John, but I’m trying to make him see that there might be another way to handle this matter. There can’t be any more putting it off, though. It has to be settled today.” Fulton looks up from the desk, where he is figuring and marking up some papers. “I can’t have this, Brown, folks bringing the law down here to get after my employees. You have off the rest of the day and take care of this thing or else don’t bother to come back.” The miller returns to his papers, slashing through some figures. Brown looks from one man to the other, then beckons to Buchan. The lawyer follows him outside, over to the shade of a big cottonwood. “I thought I told you when you come after me last time that you better leave me alone,” Brown says. “I told my story in Lawrence and then I signed a paper for Mr. Riggs that said again how it happened. I don’t mean to have anything more to do with lawyers.” “You did indeed tell me that,” says Buchan. “Your father told me something different, though, Mr. Brown. That kind old man told me, ‘Don’t let them send my boy to the penitentiary.’” “The hell you say. You stay away from my old man, don’t you worry him.” The lawyer seems not to hear this. “Your father is getting old to be living alone in Kansas while you and your brother stay here across the The Parties Ready Their Cases for Trial 49  river in Missouri. He wishes...