BETRAYAL AT THE BUFFALO RANCH
BETRAYAL AT THE BUFFALO RANCH
★
Sara Sue Hoklotubbe
The University of Arizona Press
www.uapress.arizona.edu
© 2018 by Sara Sue Hoklotubbe
All rights reserved. Published 2018
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 8165- 3727- 3 (paper)
Cover design by Leigh McDonald
Cover photo: The American Bison by Adam Cocke
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and locations portrayed and the names herein are fiction, and any similarity to or identifications with location, names, character, or history of any person, product, or entity is entirely coincidental and unintentional.
Publication of this book is made possible in part by the proceeds of a permanent endowment created with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hoklotubbe, Sara Sue, 1952– author. | Hoklotubbe, Sara Sue, 1952– Sadie Walela mystery.
Title: Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch / Sara Sue Hoklotubbe.
Description: Tucson : The University of Arizona Press, 2018. | Series: A Sadie Walela mystery | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017042839 | ISBN 9780816537273 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Women detectives—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. |
LCGFT: Novels. | Detective and mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3608.O4828 B48 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042839
Printed in the United States of America
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
For Eddie,
The love of my life, my Anam Cara,
With love
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to three remarkable women who graciously gave their
time to read my manuscript and offer helpful suggestions: Judy Soriano,
English teacher extraordinaire, for her knowledge of literature and
writing; Pam Daoust, author and sister- friend, for her insight into char-acterization and voice; and Linda Boyden, author and friend, for her
understanding of Native characters. Many thanks to Chery F. Kendrick,
DVM, for her kind help in understanding animal behavior, and Mark S.
Newman, who patiently fielded my many questions regarding all things
buffalo.
I am thankful for the candid advice I received from the late Larry
Hoklotubbe, my brother- in- law, retired Bureau of Indian Affairs law of-
ficer and weapons expert, for the extensive knowledge of firearms he so
freely shared with me. Miss you, White Buffalo.
I extend my appreciation to Kathryn Conrad, director, and Kristen
Buckles, editor- in- chief, at the University of Arizona Press, for giving me the opportunity to share Sadie’s adventures with readers everywhere,
and to Susan Campbell, copyeditor, who worked magic with my manu-
script. And finally, words cannot express how grateful I am to my hus-
band and first reader, Eddie, for his endless love and support. Wado.
BETRAYAL AT THE BUFFALO RANCH
Prologue
Angus Clyborn pulled his Dodge truck into the deserted park that the lo-
cals called Old Eucha, killed the engine, and belched. Through his open
window, he could hear the waters of Lake Eucha lapping against the
shoreline. The town of Eucha, Oklahoma, had once stood there, before
being moved to higher ground a half century earlier to make way for the
man- made lake that supplied Tulsa with fresh drinking water.
Now, the site of the old town had been reduced to boat launches,
permanent picnic tables, and outdoor toilets. Rock walls of the original
one- room schoolhouse, partly destroyed by weather and time, rose like a
monolith in the shadowy moonlight.
Resting his head against the driver’s door, Angus hiccupped. He
hoped the night air would help clear his fuzzy thinking and dissipate
the odor of alcohol swirling in the air around him. He was already in
trouble. His wife, Camilla, would give him all kinds of hell when she got a whiff of the Jack Daniels he’d spilled on his shirt.
He’d tried, promised her he’d never take another drink after the acci-
dent three years ago that took the life of a three- year- old girl and left the girl’s mother in intensive care for two months. After Angus had made a
sizable contribution to the district attorney’s reelection campaign, a trick he’d learned from his father, Angus had received a lenient suspended
sentence. The judge had also ordered him to get treatment for his drink-
ing and keep his nose clean, which he had done, but the demon of al-
cohol addiction had been harder to beat than he had originally thought.
The news that his son had been killed fighting in a useless war in
Afghanistan had turned his world upside down, throwing him into a
desperate search for solace at the bottom of a bottle of Gentleman Jack.
Blue on green, they’d said. Slang to describe the treachery carried
out by Afghan troops who, their loyalty turning on a dime, killed their
3
American trainers. It was unspeakable, incomprehensible, and tomorrow he’d bury his only son, Jason, because of it. But first he would sit in his truck in Old Eucha Park and drench his grief with Tennessee whiskey. To hell with everything else.
Without warning, a blinding light came out of nowhere. The barrel
of a gun came through the window of the truck and dug into his neck.
The cold metal startled him, and he jerked his head away from the win-
dow. Then he felt the end of the barrel press against his cheek.
“Don’t move,” said a raspy voice. “If you do, I’ll finish you off right
here.”
Still blinded by the light and dizzy from the booze, Angus swal-
lowed hard before he spoke. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Stop stealing land,” the voice demanded, “and give back the land
you’ve already stolen, or I’ll come back and erase your drunken ass from
the face of the planet. Got it?”
Angus closed his eyes and slowly nodded his head, afraid to move
any other part of his body. He tried unsuccessfully to process the voice.
“Please don’t kill me,” Angus begged. He opened his eyes and
slowly turned his head, but the light and the gun barrel had disappeared.
He opened the truck door and fell out onto the ground. Forcing
himself to his feet, he steadied his body against the truck and stared into the darkness. His labored breathing overtook the silence. In the distance, he could hear a dog barking and the call of a hoot owl.
He must be hallucinating from too much alcohol, he thought. No
one would dare talk to Angus Clyborn like that.
He pulled himself back into the truck, closed the door, and threw
the half- empty fifth of Jack Daniels out the window, the glass bottle shattering on a nearby rock. After fumbling with his keys for a few seconds,
he started the truck and flipped on the headlights. He searched first in
front of the vehicle and then slammed the shifter in reverse, causin
g the backup lights to illuminate the area behind the truck. He quickly raised
the windows and locked the doors while he frantically scanned his rear-
view mirrors for movement. Nothing.
Fear penetrated his drunken stupor as he drove out of the park and
into the night.
★
4
Angus awoke the next morning with a start. He rubbed his face and tried to remember how he had managed to end up in his own bed. Bright sunlight streamed through the sheer curtains as he fumbled at the bedside
clock. Nine fifteen, it read. He turned over to confirm what he already
knew. Camilla had left to go shopping in Tulsa, a daily ritual that had
begun the day they’d gotten word about Jason. At least it got her out of
the house, and they didn’t have to share the same space for several hours.
Adrenaline shot through his aching body and words of warning
echoed in his head . . . stop stealing land . . .
His gaze darted around the room as he sat up. His dirty clothes from
the night before lay in a heap on the floor next to the bed. Why couldn’t Camilla take care of his clothes the way his mother had? There was no
question that his dad was in control in that household. He needed to get
Camilla straightened out, he thought, before she got completely out of
control.
As he stepped into a clean pair of trousers, his thoughts circled back
it was obviously didn’t know who they were dealing with. Maybe it had
been a bad nightmare. Then he remembered what else the voice had
said . . . or I’ll come back and erase your drunken ass.
Grabbing a shirt, he headed downstairs in search of some strong
coffee.
5
Chapter 1
The crack of gunshots caused Sadie to jump. She turned and braced
herself for two more volleys from the seven- man honor guard as they
fired a twenty- one- gun salute. Afterward, the sound of taps sent a shiver up her spine, bringing up old memories of her father’s burial held in the same Eucha cemetery several years before. She pushed loose strands of
her long, straight hair away from her face as a tear fell from her cheek, an involuntary response to the death not only of a soldier she didn’t know,
but of her father, as well.
She and Lance Smith had come to the graveside service of Jason
Clyborn out of respect for his wife, Lucy, and her Cherokee family, the
Walkingsticks. Sadie had known the Walkingstick family all of her life.
They were good people.
As a veteran, Lance had volunteered to take part in the local
American Legion Post’s honor guard for the twenty- one- gun salute. The
riflemen and bugler stood away from the grave under an old oak tree.
Even on this sad occasion, Sadie gazed at Lance with pride. He looked
so handsome holding his rifle and standing at attention with the other
men, his taut, muscular body apparent beneath his deputy sheriff ’s uni-
form, and his neatly trimmed coal- black hair peeking from under his
Stetson. The vision was enough to make her heart flutter.
Lucy Clyborn looked small and cold, wrapped in a short raincoat
as she sat in a metal folding chair and sobbed while members of the
American Legion removed the American flag that had been draped on
her husband’s casket, folded it with great precision, and presented it to her with a salute. She took the flag, held it to her chest, and then placed it in her lap.
Sitting next to Lucy, her mother- in- law, Camilla Clyborn, wore a
black trench coat and hat, her face obscured by large sunglasses. Camilla 6
grabbed the flag from Lucy and buried her face in it, wailing loudly.
Sadie couldn’t believe her eyes.
Wanda Walkingstick reached down and placed a hand on her
daughter’s shoulder, a calming motherly gesture, while glancing disap-
provingly at Camilla’s tight grip on the flag. Sadie wondered if Lucy
would ever get to touch that flag again. Angus Clyborn, the dead sol-
dier’s father, snatched the flag away from his wife and shoved it back
onto Lucy’s lap, almost losing his ten- gallon hat in the act.
Angus straightened his hat, then stood and caught the arm of the
man who had presented the flag to Lucy. “Son, can you get us another
one of those flags?” he said, his voice dripping in a strong Texas accent.
“His mother wants one.”
The man stoically nodded and returned to his place. The service
didn’t last long, and Sadie felt relieved when it ended.
The cloudy April sky looked threatening and Sadie could smell rain,
so as soon as she had offered condolences to the family, she wrapped
her sweater tightly around her and walked across the cemetery to her fa-
ther’s grave. She bent down and ran her fingers over his name, Jim “Bird”
Walela, engraved in both the Cherokee syllabary and English. His friends
had called him Bird, shortened from the English version of the Walela
name— Hummingbird. She missed him terribly— his easygoing ways, his
quiet words of wisdom, and his no- nonsense philosophy of life.
Sadie glanced at the empty plot next to her dad’s grave that had been
reserved for her mother, and a mental image of her intruded into Sadie’s
thoughts. Sadie doubted the woman would ever return to Delaware
County again, dead or alive. As a white woman in an Indian commu-
nity, her mother had never fit in, not because she hadn’t been welcome,
words still stung Sadie’s heart, and the thought of never seeing her again suited Sadie fine.
Sadie removed the weathered fake flowers from the bronze vase at-
tached to her father’s headstone and carried them to her car. When she
got in, she placed the flowers on the floorboard and waited for Lance.
She tilted the rearview mirror toward her face and used her fingers to
comb her bangs and smooth her hair. Removing a beaded hair clip, she
held it in her mouth while she straightened her hair behind her neck and
clamped it back into position. Before moving the mirror back into place,
7
she checked the rest of her face, admiring her new beaded earrings, a gift from her Kickapoo friend, Leslie. The circular design and bright
colors— lime green, brown, red, and yellow— contrasted nicely with her
black hair and complemented the oval shape of her face. She smiled and
thought of Lance. He loved looking into her blue eyes; he’d told her this so many times she’d lost count.
She watched the people slowly migrate away from the grave and
thought the crowd could have been easily divided between two distinct
groups— Indian friends of the Walkingsticks and the white folks who
had come for the Clyborn side of the family. Even in the middle of the
Cherokee Nation, the same cultural divide remained that had been there
for centuries: Indian and white, those who lived by modest means and
those wearing gold jewelry and expensive clothes.
Angus stopped walking and waved the rest of the family on as he
pulled a half- smoked cigar from his pocket and lit it. A man approached
Angus and they began to talk. He had gray hair and light skin, and he
shook Angus’s hand with a
nimation. Sadie could see Angus’s hat bob-
bing affirmatively now and then as he listened.
Sadie scrunched her nose in disgust and strained to see the man as
he pulled a can of dipping tobacco out of his pocket and pushed a pinch
into his lower lip. She whistled silently to herself when she recognized
him as the Cherokee chief, John Henry Greenleaf. It certainly appeared
kind of him, she thought, to support Lucy and her family by attending
Jason’s funeral, but she knew it was simply a public display, appearing
to care for Cherokees he didn’t even know. He was always the quintes-
sential politician.
Sadie dismissed Angus and the chief from her thoughts when Lance
approached her car, his cell phone jammed up against his left ear. She
lowered her window and waited for him to finish talking.
He dropped his phone into his pocket, removed his hat, and bent
down so he could kiss her through the window. “I’ve got to run. The
sheriff needs me,” he said. “I’ll call you later.” He kissed her again, replaced his hat, and disappeared into the crowd.
“The sheriff always needs you.” Her words disintegrated into the
damp air.
Lance had recently given up his job as the police chief of Liberty,
Oklahoma, to become the deputy sheriff for the Delaware County
8
Sheriff ’s Department. Sadie thought it was a good fit for Lance. Being the deputy sheriff meant he was second in command. He supervised two
deputies and managed the law enforcement side of the office, leaving the
administrative and political part of the job to the newly elected sheriff, Buddy Long. Long was a good politician but knew very little about the
day- to- day operations of enforcing the law.
When Buddy Long asked Lance to take the job of deputy sheriff,
Lance didn’t hesitate. The job carried less responsibility than his former position as the chief of police in Liberty, and he could leave the budget maneuvering and political wrangling behind. The pay was about the
same, he’d said, and this job gave him more time for fishing.
But Sadie knew the truth. It also gave him a chance to live closer to
her. He’d moved back to Kenwood, the community where he’d grown
up, about eight miles as the crow flies across Lake Eucha from her place