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II

June 13, 1927, Carlos Huntington Webster, now a six-footer, was in Oklahoma City wearing a new light-gray suit of clothes and a panama with the brim curved on his eyes just right, staying at a hotel, riding a streetcar for the first time, and being sworn in as a Deputy United States Marshal; while Lindbergh was being honored in New York City, tons of ticker tape dumped on the Lone Eagle for flying across the ocean; and Frank Miller, released from McAlester in bib overalls, was back in Checotah with Faye Harris, his suit hanging in the closet these six years since the marshals hauled him off in his drawers. The first thing Frank Miller did, once he got off of Faye, was make phone calls to get his gang back together.

Carlos was given a leave to go home after his training and spent it with his old dad, telling him things:

What the room was like at the Huskin Hotel.

What he had to eat at the Plaza Grill.

How he saw a band called Walter Page’s Blue Devils that was all colored guys.

How when firing a pistol you put your weight forward, one foot ahead of the other, so if you get hit you can keep firing as you fall.

And one other thing.

Everybody called him Carl instead of Carlos. At first he wouldn’t answer to it and got in arguments, a couple of times almost fistfights.

“You remember Bob Cardell?”

“R.C. ‘Bob’ Cardell,” Virgil said, “the quiet one.”

“My boss now. He says, ‘I know you’re named for your grandaddy to honor him, but you’re using it like a chip on your shoulder instead of a name.’ ”

Virgil was nodding his head. “Ever since that moron Frank Miller called you a greaser. I know what Bob means. Like, ‘I’m Carlos Webster, what’re you gonna do about it?’ You were little I’d call you Carl sometimes. You liked it okay.”

“Bob Cardell says, ‘What’s wrong with Carl? All it is, it’s a nickname for Carlos.’ ”

“There you are,” Virgil said. “Try it on.”

“I’ve been wearing it the past month or so. ‘Hi, I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Carl Webster.’ ”

“You feel any different?”

“I do, but I can’t explain it.”

A call from Bob Cardell cut short Carl’s leave. The Frank Miller Gang was back robbing banks.

What the marshals tried to do over the next few months was anticipate the gang’s moves. They robbed banks in Shawnee, Seminole, and Bowlegs on a line south. Maybe Ada would be next. No, it turned out to be Coalgate.

An eyewitness said he was in the barbershop as Frank Miller was getting a shave—except the witness didn’t know who it was till later, after the bank was robbed. “Him and the barber are talking, this one who’s Frank Miller mentions he’s planning on getting married pretty soon. The barber happens to be a minister of the Church of Christ and offers to perform the ceremony. Frank Miller says he might take him up on it and gives the reverend a five-dollar bill for the shave. Then him and his boys robbed the bank.”

Coalgate was on that line south, but then they veered way over west to Kingfisher, took six thousand from the First National but lost a man: Jim Ray Monks, slow coming out of the bank on his bum legs, was shot down in the street. Before Monks knew he was dying he told them, “Frank’s sore you never put more’n five hundred on his head. He’s out to show he’s worth a whole lot more.”

The bank after Kingfisher was American National in Baxter Springs, way up on the Kansas line. The gang appeared to specialize in robbing banks in dinky towns, rush in with gunfire to get people’s attention, and ride out with a hostage or two on the running board as a shield. Hit three or four banks in a row and then disappear for a time. There were reports of gang members spotted during these periods of lying low, but Frank Miller was never one of them.

“I bet anything,” Carl said, standing before the wall map in Bob Cardell’s office, “he hides out in Checotah, at Faye Harris’s place.”

“Where we nabbed him,” Bob Cardell said, nodding, remembering. “Faye was just a girl then, wasn’t she?”

“I heard Frank was already seeing her,” Carl said, “while she’s married to