Black Gold by Matt Braun

Author:Matt Braun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2004-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Jack Spivey turned onto the road. Dusk had fallen and he switched on his headlights. He drove toward Pawhuska.

All day he’d been calling on Osages whose land was near Grammer’s ranch. He started three miles east of the ranch, and early that afternoon he had driven three miles west and began working his way back. The home he’d just left was only a half mile from Grammer’s fence line.

Spivey had met with mixed reception. In his guise as an insurance man, he’d jollied his way into homes and made his sales pitch on annuity plans. Over the course of the day, he had called on the heads of five Osage families, and actually sold one of them a twenty-year annuity. Although he wasn’t allowed to keep the commissions, he’d begun to envy insurance men. He was making more than he earned with the Bureau.

Yet his good humor tonight was along altogether different lines. After his sales spiel, he’d subtly worked the conversation around to affairs in Osage County. Some of the men were more talkative than others, but they all had strong opinions on government run solely by and for the benefit of whites. Once he got them talking, he’d managed to steer the conversation around to the subject of the Osage murders. From there, it was only a short step to the matter of poisoned moonshine, and their nearby neighbor, Harry Grammer. Three of them had clammed up the moment Grammer’s name was mentioned.

The other two spoke their minds. They were aware of the still on Grammer’s ranch, and they were quick to speculate that the moonshine he produced might have been responsible for some of the deaths. No less quickly, they raised the possibility that white husbands had poisoned their Osage wives. Almost as an afterthought, linking Osage County’s political boss to the moonshiner, Spivey casually asked if they’d ever seen Big Bill Hale at Grammer’s ranch. The Osage he’d just left had pinned the tail on the donkey.

Luther Baxter was a simple man, with no gift for duplicity. He’d admitted seeing Big Bill Hale many times. Hale’s car was a maroon four-door Cadillac, known to everyone in Osage County. On several occasions, Baxter had seen the car driving in or driving out of the gravel driveway to Grammer’s ranch house. Once, passing by in his chauffeured Pierce-Arrow, Baxter had seen Hale at the wheel of the Cadillac, pulling out into the road. He found nothing unusual in what he told Spivey, for Grammer couldn’t operate without Hale’s permission. Baxter had laughed and said: “Why else you think they call him Big Bill?”

Spivey was elated. As he drove away from Baxter’s house, he couldn’t wait to relay the news to Gordon and Proctor. Placing Hale at Grammer’s ranch was hardly evidence of a conspiracy, and no proof at all that Hale was involved in the murders. But it was the first step in building a case, for it established an ongoing relationship between the political kingpin and Osage County’s criminal element.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.