Howard Bryan Bonham

The Paleface on the Cracker Jack Box Howard Bryan Bonham

Waitey McColl is a young adult working as the night clerk of the Sequoyah House hotel, in the Cherokee Badlands of eastern Oklahoma. A Native American of mixed blood, he was born in the Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory, a few years before the region became the 46th state of Oklahoma in 1907. He is smart and ambitious; and, as a direct descendant of the Cherokee Trail of Tears?a pejorative among Native Americans describing the forcible removal of ancestors from the United States?he harbors a deep resentment toward the white society. The angst of his ancestors has been passed down through generations to him. During a fierce winter storm in the town of Seymour, where the respectable hotel is located, the notorious outlaw Henry Starr appears like a specter from the past. Although he spent several years on the FBI?s ?most wanted? lists, he has been on parole for five years and out of public view. Waitey considers him the last of the really bad actors?desperadoes such as Jessie and Frank James, the Daltons, Quantrill, Cole Younger and others who fled to the Cherokee Badlands to escape federal law officers and justice. On the stormy night visit, Henry Starr introduces himself to Waitey as a cousin, and coerces the intimidated night clerk into providing lodging for him and his gang. They are traveling in a snazzy Stutz Bearcat automobile, a zeitgeist of the Roaring Twenties. They leave at dawn, as Henry Starr promised, but Waitey?s troubles are far from over. He becomes embroiled in a police manhunt for the gang, after they rob a bank in a neighboring state. In doing so, mayhem breaks out and they kill a customer, employee and a deputy sheriff. In the getaway, Henry Starr is also killed. In the dramatic climax, which causes Waitey to re-examine some engrained beliefs, a gunfight breaks out in the hotel lobby. The violence endangers hotel guests, Waitey?s relatives and his beautiful sweetheart, whom he loves passionately. Suddenly thrown into the role of a guardian of Christian values, Waitey must choose between aiding the iconic town sheriff or the renegade outlaws, who consider him a traitor to the cause of Native Americans. He makes a coming-of-age decision that will liberate him or haunt him forever.