stealthy approach of a grim specter—an unseen hand—that has
laid a blight upon the Osage land and converted the broad acres,
which other Indian tribes enviously regard as a demi-paradise,
into a Golgotha and field of dead men’s skulls....The perennial
question in the Osage land is, ‘who will be next?’ ”
The murders had created a climate of terror that ate at the
community. People suspected neighbors, suspected friends.
Charles Whitehorn’s widow said she was sure that the same
parties who had murdered her husband would soon “do away with
her.” A visitor staying in Fairfax later recalled that people were
overcome by “paralyzing fear,” and a reporter observed that a “dark
cloak of mystery and dread...covered the oil-bespattered valleys of
the Osage hills.”
In spite of the growing risks, Mollie and her family pressed on
with their search for the killers. Bill Smith confided in several
people that he was getting “warm” with his detective work. One
night, he was with Rita at their house, in an isolated area outside
Fairfax, when they thought that they heard something moving
around the perimeter of the house. Then the noise stopped;
whatever, whoever, it was had disappeared. A few nights later, Bill
and Rita heard the jostling again. Intruders—yes, they had to be—
were outside, rattling objects, probing, then vanishing. Bill told a
friend, “Rita’s scared,” and Bill seemed to have lost his bruising
confidence.
Less than a month after Roan’s death, Bill and Rita fled their
home, leaving behind most of their belongings. They moved into
an elegant, two-story house, with a porch and a garage, near the
center of Fairfax. (They’d bought the house from the doctor James
Shoun, who was a close friend of Bill’s.) Several of the neighbors
had watchdogs, which barked at the slightest disturbance; surely,
these animals would signal if the intruders returned. “Now that