“Backbone of Draft Rebellion Believed Broken”
—Tulsa Daily World, August 5, 1917
Scott looked up from the papers on his desk when Alafair and Shaw came into the office late the next morning. “Well, hey. Y’all here to visit Robin before I haul him off to Muskogee?”
Alafair heaved a great sigh in lieu of an answer.
“How’s Charlie?”
“In trouble,” Shaw answered. “But I reckon he’ll live to tell the tale.”
Scott lifted a wanted poster off the desk and handed it to Alafair. “Does this old cuss look familiar?”
Alafair peered at the poster. “Well, he isn’t wearing a bowler hat, but I reckon that’s the same fellow that tried to kill my boy. He’s got them creepy eyes and that little scar.”
Shaw took the paper from her and began to read. “Nicholas Zrska. That’s an odd moniker. Says here he’s wanted in California and in Colorado for murder.”
Scott nodded. “Yesterday I wired the U.S. Marshal’s office in Oklahoma City for more information on him. Zrska was involved in the killing of those five Wobblies who tried to organize the loggers up in Washington State last year. But that’s not what got him in trouble. Seems he knifed the man who hired him to police the dockworkers in San Pedro, and is suspected of killing a supervisor at the steel mill in Pueblo, Colorado. He didn’t play favorites when it came to murder.”
“So he wasn’t the devil after all,” Alafair said, half to herself.
Shaw glanced over the list of Nick’s crimes. “I don’t know if I’d say that, honey.”
“Did you talk to Mr. Khouri’s father?” Alafair asked Scott. “I hope he’s not in hot water.” She had told Scott about Nick’s encounters with Grandfather Khouri and Emmanuel Clover had admitted his own. She hadn’t mentioned her conversation with Rose Lovelock. Her mother-in-law Sally had pointed out that Rose was long gone. Besides, the woman had enough troubles.
“I did talk to him,” Scott said. “I don’t arrest folks for wishing harm to their enemies. But after what him and Emmanuel told me I’m convinced that it was Zrska who murdered Win and Billy Claude, not Dutch. Nor was Robin involved, either. Not in the killings, at least. Ober still thinks that Dutch was the saboteur at the plant, and it is true that he was I.W.W., same as Robin. Ober figures that Dutch and Zrska had undermined the train trestle together before they made their way into the plant bent on some other mischief.”
“You don’t really think Robin had anything to do with sabotage, do you?”
“I don’t, Alafair. But that’s not for me to judge.”
Alafair didn’t look happy, but she said, “I know it. Can I see him now?”
Scott nodded toward the door to the cells. “Go ahead on.”
She disappeared and Shaw sat down in one of the chairs under the window. “You ain’t going in?” Scott asked him.
“I’ll give her a minute.”
“It was good of you to bring her in to town to visit with him before I haul him off.”
The corner of Shaw’s mouth twisted up in an ironic smile. “I ain’t letting her out of my sight again for a long spell, Scott. There is no telling what she might get up to.”
Scott chuckled. “Good luck to you.”
Shaw stood up, reconsidered, and sat back down. “Scott, Robin is a misguided pain in the neck, but he is not a traitor. Besides, he’s family. Do you really have to turn him over to the marshal in the morning?”
“I’d just as soon not, but there must have been a hundred posse men who heard his anti-war rant. He was in cahoots with the draft rioters, there’s no denying that. The insurgents are being rounded up all over the state, and for the moment the U.S. Marshal’s Office is holding most of them in the federal jails in Holdenville and Muskogee. I don’t have any choice but to take Robin in.”
Shaw leaned forward in his chair, an earnest expression on his face. “I ain’t a socialist, Scott. Far from it. It is not the business of government to take a man’s property or skills that he worked hard to gain and give them to someone else without even asking. But there’s many a man I respect who believes that party line, to one degree or another. There are so many socialists in Oklahoma they can’t all be put in jail! The majority rules in this country, but don’t the minority have rights, as well?”
Scott regarded his cousin for a moment before answering. “They used to. I guess we’re about to see if they still do.”