Henry took his second brush with the law a bit more in stride. To begin with, Muskogee was not as far away from home as was Fort Smith. In fact, Muskogee was less than a dozen miles from the home of Henry’s mother near Fort Gibson. In the second place, Henry knew from his first experience that Uncle Charlie Starr not only could, but would, help him out of a jam, and from the jail in Muskogee, Henry found it relatively simple to get word to his uncle. The jail, though far from pleasant, was much more easily endured than was the one at Fort Smith, and, finally, though it was certainly frustrating for Henry to have been accused wrongly a second time, his first experience taught him that he could get out of the troublesome situation and recover from it. In short, although he was angry at the mistreatment he was receiving at the hands of the federal authorities, he was also just a bit cocky. He was a veteran.
Uncle Charlie did show up, and he did get Henry out of the cell. This time, however, Henry would have to go to court, and this time Charlie Starr had a different kind of advice.
“I advise you to plead guilty, Henry,” he said, “and pay the fine.”
“But, Uncle Charlie, I didn’t do anything.”
“This time, Henry, you got no case. You was arrested by two deputies—not one—two. You was alone, and they found whiskey on you.”
“It wasn’t on me, Uncle Charlie. It was in the wagon, and I told you how it got there. I didn’t even know what it was.”
“Henry,” said Charlie, “it’s your word against theirs. Two lawmen. There wasn’t nobody else around. You are, in fact, guilty of having that stuff in your possession. There is no way we can even argue against that.”
“It was a setup,” said Henry. “Someone’s out to get me because of Uncle Sam and Grandpa.”
Charlie Starr rubbed his fists into his eyes and turned away from his nephew. He knew that there was a possibility that Henry might be right. He didn’t really think that was what was happening, but it had happened before. Old Tom Starr, father of Charlie and Sam and Hop, was said to have killed a hundred men. His father, James, had been one of the signers of the Treaty of New Echota, the fraudulent treaty by which the United States Government justified the removal of the entire Cherokee Nation from their ancestral homelands in what had become North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and other Southern states. The treaty signers had been blamed by other tribal members for the misery of the Trail of Tears, and after the bitter trail, treaty signers, including Major Ridge, John Ridge, Elias Boudinot, and James Starr, had been brutally assassinated. Tom had witnessed the killing of his father and had vowed revenge, and the bloody trail he left behind him insured the entire Starr family more than its share of enemies.
Tom Starr had lived to a ripe old age, and even before his death, his son Sam had added to the notoriety of the family by his marriage to a white woman named Myra Belle Shirley. She had become famous as Belle Starr, and Belle and Sam, Henry’s Uncle Sam, were rumored to be involved in a large-scale horse stealing operation. There were dime novels out circulating all over the country about the Starrs, particularly about Belle, but Sam and even Old Tom were frequently mentioned in the tales. It was a family reputation that was not always easy to live with. Henry particularly resented the fact that his family name was beginning to be associated widely with a white woman. Some of the dime novels he had seen did not even make mention of the fact that Belle’s husband, Sam, was Indian. He appeared as a white man.
At any rate, Charlie Starr knew that there were people who would do almost anything to get to the Starrs. He knew that Henry had nothing to do with the revenge pattern of Old Tom or with the activities of Sam and Belle, but he also knew that to some, none of that would make any difference. In fact, according to Charlie’s experience with the world, there were a good many people who would seek revenge or assuage their jealousies by purposefully seeking out the seeming most vulnerable and defenseless member of a family.
Charlie turned back on Henry with a surprising fierceness in his look.
“I don’t think so, Henry,” he said. “Most of that’s long over. More likely, one of two things happened. Either that fellow who dumped the whiskey on you knew that there were some deputies around and he needed to get rid of it quick and found you handy, or maybe he was in cahoots with them laws to set you up. You know what they call them blank warrants they carry around on them?”
“Yeah,” said Henry. “Whiskey warrants.”
When Henry stood up before the judge in the courtroom in Muskogee, a court that had been established by the federal government just to deal with violations of the liquor laws in the so-called Indian Territory and thereby to lessen the load on the federal court in Fort Smith, he took his uncle’s advice.
“How do you plead?” droned the judge.
Henry took a deep breath. He steeled himself against what he was about to do that went so much against his grain—that so violated his strong sense of duyukduh.
“Guilty,” he said. He felt cold and hard. He felt betrayed all over again, and most of all he felt as if he had finally, through experience, learned the absolute truth about the white man and his government. The extent of the corruption of the federal law enforcement system, including the courts, had been laid bare before him. He felt smug, and he felt totally cynical.
“The fine is one hundred dollars. Pay the clerk.”
The judge rapped his gavel. He was shuffling papers on his desk, pushing those for Henry’s case aside and already looking at those for his next victim. He had not once, throughout the entire proceedings, even looked at Henry. Henry turned to walk back to the clerk’s table with a smirk on his face. He knew these people, he thought, much better than they knew him. They would not catch him napping again.
“Next case,” droned the judge.
Uncle Charlie Starr paid the fine, then he bought Henry a railroad ticket back to Nowata. Henry had a vague feeling that his uncle had been glad to see him off on the train. In fact, Henry thought that there was more than an even chance that Charlie hadn’t believed his story this time. He was developing a reputation not of his own making, and the prediction of his dream, the dream in which his friends and relatives had turned their backs on him in shame, was beginning to come true.