Whiskey Kills

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “What the hell,” snapped the man named Blake as he bulled his way through the brush, pulling his suspenders over his shoulders, then stuffing a muslin shirt in patched britches. He jerked to a standstill, as if he had slammed into an invisible wall, staring at Daniel for a moment before he started forward again, cautiously now, wiping his hands on his legs, not halting until he found himself beside the tall man.

  “Some kind of sentry you is, Uvalde,” Blake said.

  Older. Much older. A dirty white beard formed a point at the V in his shirt. The beard looked dirtier than the battered hat, which also formed a point, aiming toward the gray sky. The rest of his face looked as if it had been run over by a farmer’s plow, and dried in the sun. Blake wasn’t as tall as his partner, but likely weighed twice as much.

  Gnarly fingers groped his beard. “You hear what I said?” he barked again.

  “You told me to fry up some supper, Blake. Didn’t put me on guard duty. Said we didn’t need no guard.”

  “We don’t.” With a quick smile, Blake walked around the fire. “You’re off the rez, buck,” he told Daniel, still grinning. His front teeth reminded Daniel of a quilt of sorts. One gold. One black. One yellow. One missing. One brown. “Long way from the agency, I say.” Blake frowned at Daniel’s silence. He raised his voice. “I say you’re off the reservation, boy.” He stretched a big arm out, pointing east. “Reservation. That way. T’uther side of the river. Best run back there, buck. Else the Army’ll get you. Or Texicans who ain’t as friendly as me and Uvalde. Ain’t that right, pard?”

  “That’s right.” The young one lacked the old man’s confidence.

  Daniel held his tongue.

  The man called Blake lowered his arm suddenly, and swore. “You speak English?” Nothing. “¿Habla usted inglés?”

  “He ain’t a greaser, Blake. He’s an Injun. Kiowa, I warrant.”

  Blake turned to glare at his partner. “I know what he is, and he ain’t Kiowa, neither. Bunch of them bucks know Spanish better than a Mex. He’s Comanch’.”

  “Jesus!” Ulvade’s eyes widened.

  “Don’t piss your pants. He ain’t after our scalps.” Blake winked at Daniel, and stretched his grin. “Rekwaru taibo? Huh? Rekwaru taibo?”

  His syntax was wrong, and, like most Pale Eyes, his tongue tripped over the words of The People, but Daniel had heard worse attempts from white men. This one, at least, tried.

  “Speak English? Rekwaru taibo? Rekwaru taibo? Speak American, boy? You deaf?”

  “He’s wearing a badge, Blake,” Uvalde said.

  “I ain’t blind.” Blake snapped his fingers, and his big head bobbed. “Oh, now I savvy. It’s whiskey that you want. Posa baa?”

  Blake shot a quick look at his partner, explaining: “Injun lawdogs got the biggest thirst there is, whether they’s civilized like Creeks, or savages like Comanch’.”

  Facing Daniel again, Blake said: “That it, buck? Posa baa?” He pretended as if he held a jug, brought his hand to his mouth, swallowing, then staggering a crazy man’s dance. When he stopped, he looked at Daniel. “That’s it, ain’t it, buck? Posa baa? It’s posa baa that you want. Well, come on in, Mister Comanch’, we got whiskey to warm you up.”

  The old man moved with surprising litheness for a man his size, reached the wagon, and leaped onto the bed. He threw back a stained canvas tarp. As Daniel walked toward the fire, he heard the clinking of glass against glass. “Taa-daaaaaa!” Blake, sounding like a magician at some dog and pony show, raised a bottle over his head. He uncorked it with his teeth, spit the cork into his free hand, and took a long pull, then started to toss the bottle at Daniel, only stopped, bringing the bottle back to his big gut, laughing.

  “Money,” he said. “Puhihwi? Ekapuhihwi? This good whiskey. Ain’t free. Costs money. You got any, buck? Puhihwi? Ekapuhihwi? Or we can work out a trade, maybe so.”

  “I have money,” Daniel said, and the laughter died. With his left hand, Daniel reached into his coat pocket, fingered a gold piece, pulled it out, holding it in the sunlight, then tossing it onto the ground, halfway between the fire and the wagon. “How much would that buy me?” he asked.

  Blake’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “You been holdin’ out on me, Comanch’. Speak real good English, don’t you? Not an honest way of doin’ business.” He corked the bottle and flipped it, sending it sailing toward Daniel as he climbed not so sprightly off the wagon. Slowly, wily now, the whiskey peddler made his way toward the Henry rifle.

  Instead of reaching to catch the bottle, Daniel let it drop, clunking on the ground, and rested his right hand on the butt of the big Remington in his holster. “That’s close enough to that rifle.”

  Blake stopped. The young one whispered something, and moved back a few steps from the fire.

  Watching them, Daniel retrieved the heavy bottle, thumbed the cork onto the dirt, and held the whiskey under his nose. His eyes burned, and he drew the pint back. It was ceramic stoneware, fairly heavy, made for beer. Daniel had seen similar bottles back in the grog shops of Pennsylvania where the miners would go after their shifts, bringing Daniel, who worked alongside them, even though Daniel did not drink. Deep under the surface of the earth, Daniel had been a fellow worker, breathing the same bad air, working the same grueling shift, sharing jokes with those husky Irish and German workers. In the beer gardens, however, those burly Pennsylvania men treated him more like the mine’s mascot.

  He shook away the memories, and thought back to Toyarocho’s camp, the mountain of broken glass shining in the sun. Daniel examined the bottle closely. True, Toyarocho had held a bottle like this one in his hand, but most of the shattered glass seemed different. Not the tough stoneware, but more recent, lighter bottles, some cobalt, but mostly clear glass. Daniel could also picture shattered pieces of brown clay jugs in that pile of rubble. Slowly Daniel tilted the bottle, letting the whiskey puddle at his moccasins.

  “The hell are you doin’?” Blake roared.

  “I paid for it,” Daniel said. When the bottle was empty, he tossed it, letting it thud near the coin he had thrown. “That’s a twenty-dollar gold piece,” Daniel said. “Should buy more than one pint. Let’s see what else you have.”

  Nobody moved, until Daniel drew his revolver. Blake started for the rifle, but a sharp word from Daniel stopped the man as Daniel thumbed back the hammer. He started to point the .44 at the old man, then decided the other man would be more pliable.

  “Show me some more bottles,” he said.

  Uvalde hesitated.

  “You ain’t got no right!” Blake thundered. The old man kept looking through the brush, searching, Daniel guessed, for deputy marshals—white men. The runner couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, not comprehending yet that Daniel was here alone. Likely trying to guess what Daniel wanted. Whiskey? Money? Scalps?

  Daniel steadied the revolver. “Now,” he spoke harshly, and the young one, Uvalde, made a beeline for the wagon, climbed into the back, and brought up a bottle in each hand.

  Ceramic stoneware, just like the one Daniel had examined.

  “Are they all like that?” he asked.

  The question perplexed the tall man.

  “That kind of bottle?” Daniel explained. “Big, old, heavy ones. Not like the newer bottles they’re making.”

  “Yeah.” Uvalde sounded uncertain.

  “No jugs? No canning jars? On the reservation, I’ve seen whiskey in ink reservoirs, coffee cans, gourds. Are yours all in bottles like those?”

  “Yeah. Beer bottles. From the . . .”

  “Shut up!” Blake snapped.

  “I haven’t seen bottles like this around here,” Daniel said.

  Blake’s bronzed face reddened. “Who the hell are you? What do you want?”

  “You,” answered Daniel, surprised he could hold his temper, which raged behind his façade. He tapped his badge.

  “Metal shirt.” The big man snorted. “Comanch’ lawdog. Well, you ain’t shit to me. You got no jurisdiction,
Comanch’, no matter how good you savvy and speak English. This here is Greer County, for one. For another, red niggers ain’t got the right to arrest no white man. No place. Never!”

  “Maybe he wants . . . you know . . . ,” Uvalde started, and Blake rediscovered his ugly grin.

  “Yeah. Is that it, buck? What’s your name, by the way? I’m Blake Browne. This here is my new pard, Uvalde. Ted Smith’s what he calls hisself, but I don’t think Smith is his truthful name. You got a name, don’t you? You can share your name with old Blake Browne. Hell, boy, I likely sold your grandpa whiskey on the Arkansas River back in the good days, when you Comanch’ was lords of these southern plains, back when this was nothin’ but a kingdom of Comanch’, and old Blake Browne . . . wasn’t so old back then . . . made a fine livin’ treatin’ with your chiefs.” Another wink. “And your squaws.”

  “Sergeant Daniel Killstraight.”

  “Sergeant.” Blake tried to whistle, but didn’t quite succeed. “Sergeant. I see. What you get paid, boy? Eight dollars a month? Maybe ten?” A fat finger stabbed at the gold piece. “Not enough to be carryin’ no Liberty coin, that’s certain sure. So you want a little, how do you say it, a token of our appreciation? Tribute? A little payment for helpin’ out old Blake Browne and Uvalde Ted Smith by lookin’ elsewhere when we’s in your neck of the woods. Is that it, Sergeant Dan’l?”

  “I want your two hides,” Daniel said.

  “You’re ’bout to get a come-uppance, buck,” Blake snarled. “No uppity Injun speaks to me like . . .” He stopped, shook his head.

  “No, you ain’t after no bribe. You’s here for Dakota. Dakota paid you. That’s it. Hell, I should have knowed it all along. Well, you tell Dakota to go to hell. Courtesy of me and Uvalde. Blake Browne’s got a claim on this territory. It’s always been Blake Browne’s territory. I made that one deal with your boss, but that’s all, and never again. Wouldn’t have done it then had I known what a burr under my saddle . . .” He stopped just long enough to snort and spit. “No, I ain’t interested in partnerin’ with your crooked boss.”

  “I am here for Sehebi.” A taboo among The People, speaking the name of the dead, but Daniel didn’t care. He wanted these two louts to remember her name. Ice tinged his words. Uvalde and Blake barely heard him.

  “Don’t know the gent,” Blake said.

  “She’s dead. She was four years old. Whiskey killed her.”

  Whirling, Blake demanded a bottle from his partner, and started guzzling. Despite the cold, sweat damped both men’s faces.

  Daniel moved to the fire. The smell of the salt pork, now cool, pained him. He had to fight the urge to snatch up the meat, and devour it. He was famished, but he controlled those emotions, that one, anyway, but he knew he couldn’t contain the fury boiling inside him, not much longer.

  “See,” said Blake Browne, lowering the bottle, and wiping his mouth with a dingy shirt sleeve. “I don’t know what your beef is, but Blake Browne is a businessman. I don’t sell no whiskey that I wouldn’t drink myself, not even to a whiskey-rotted Comanch’. You ask any of your savage pals. You ask anybody from Teepee City to Huupi and Riverland to Fort Cobb, and they’ll tell you that Blake Browne’s an honest dealer of fine spirits.”

  “Whiskey’s illegal on the reservation. You two are bound for Judge Parker, I warrant, in Fort Smith.”

  “Like hell.” Savagely Blake Browne grabbed for the Henry.

  The Remington roared, shattering the bottle in the old man’s left hand, spraying him with shards and whiskey. His right hand jerked back as if burned by a brand.

  “You killed her!” Only later, after he could remember what happened, did Daniel realize he had spoken those three words in Comanche. He fired again, destroying the bottle in Uvalde’s hand. “She was four years old,” he said, speaking English now, “and you killed her.”

  “We ain’t killed nobody . . . ,” Blake Browne started. Then he was screaming as Daniel ran, unable to restrain his rage. Daniel saw Uvalde leap off the buckboard. He fired, high over the running man’s head, heard Uvalde crashing through the brush, yelling as he fell into the gully.

  The mules struggled against the rope pickets.

  The wind rustled in the blackjacks.

  Blake Browne recovered to grab the Henry, but Daniel was on him, pounding him with the heavy barrel of the Remington.

  “You can’t touch me!” Blake Browne bellowed. “By God . . . I’m . . . white . . .”

  It felt like a dream.

  Uvalde Ted Smith screaming from somewhere in the gully, the mules braying, stamping, finally pulling free, bolting through the blackjacks, and the sound of tearing flesh, metal against bone, the cries and grunts of Blake Browne. Daniel saw none of this. He only saw Sehebi’s lifeless body, and her drunken father, holding a pint of whiskey.

  Daniel held the empty bottle now. He didn’t remember picking it up, using it for a club. His Remington was back in the holster, and Blake Browne lay on the ground at his feet, crawling toward the fire, still alive. Daniel raised the bottle. Heavy. Had to weigh more than one pound, and empty at that. He hammered the bottle downward, aiming at Blake’s white head, but, at the last second, he changed course, and the bottle struck the whiskey runner’s shoulder.

  He stopped, exhausted, reason returning to him. The only sound, Blake Browne’s whimpering.

  Sweating, Daniel dropped the bottle, wet his lips, and picked up the gold coin. He shoved it into his coat pocket, and drew the Remington as he walked to the rear of the wagon. The .44 roared. He kept pulling the trigger until the hammer snapped empty. Amber whiskey spilled from the crate, spreading across the floor, soaking into the tarp.

  Moving with a purpose, Daniel holstered the empty revolver, and stooped over the fire, grabbed the end of a burning chunk of oak, and lifted it like a torch, moving back to the wagon. Without a word, he pitched the firebrand onto the canvas, and watched the flames, hearing the bottles softly explode, fueling the inferno, smelling smoke, feeling heat that almost singed his eyebrows.

  Later—how long he wasn’t certain—he stood over Blake Browne’s body. The man lay face down, arms stretched out, fingers dug in the ground.

  After that, Daniel remembered nothing, until he was riding away on the buckskin mare the next morning, watching the Wichita Mountains rise from out of the plains, feeling the first flakes of snow sting his face.

  Chapter Three

  He answered to Daniel Killstraight, a name the Pale Eyes had given him. As a child, when the Kwahadi band of The People roamed El Llano Estacado as free people, he had been called Oá, meaning Horn. Later, still a boy, probably no older than seven or eight, Daniel had earned a new name, His Arrows Fly Straight Into The Hearts Of His Enemies. His father’s name. Given to him by his father, who had taken a new name, Marsh Hawk.

  They were Nermernuh. What was it the white-haired whiskey runner had said? The good old days . . . when Comanch’ was lords of these southern plains . . . when this was nothin’ but a kingdom of Comanch’.

  Good old days? Maybe. Yet Daniel couldn’t remember much about those times. Mostly what he recalled was starving, especially after the white hunters had destroyed chutz, buffalo, the lifeblood of The People. Especially after bluecoats had attacked their camp in the cañon the Pale Eyes called the Palo Duro. Had destroyed their food. Killed their horses, perhaps a thousand fine animals, pushed The People into the relentless Staked Plains, hunted them as The People had once hunted and crushed their enemies.

  Without mercy.

  They ate their dogs until there were no more dogs left in camp. They survived on turkey, breaking the taboo of The People by eating such things, when they could find the birds, grasshoppers when they could not. Holding out as long as they could.

  In the hot months of his ninth year, he was with his father, mother, his friends, all weakened by the lack of food, by the blistering sun, when the bluecoat chief known as Bad Hand sent a messenger—a Pale Eyes doctor called Sturms—into the Kwahadi camp on the White Riv
er. Bad Hand sent a message. The Kwahadi could surrender, to live in peace, where they would be protected from the Tejanos, or they would be hunted down. Killed.

  He was there, after Sturms returned to Bad Hand, watching Quanah talk to Teepee That Stands Alone, Isa Nanaka, and Daniel’s father, Marsh Hawk, and then watching Quanah ride off to seek a vision to tell him what he should do. He was there, broiling in the sun, when Quanah returned, his face gaunt, eyes strained, cheeks wet with tears.

  He was with Quanah when the last of the Kwahadis—one hundred warriors, maybe another three hundred Kwahadi—rode or walked to Fort Sill, the bluecoat fort built in the heart of what had once had been that kingdom of The People.

  He remembered Bad Hand’s Long Knives taking their rifles, their pistols, their horses.

  Oh, yes, Daniel remembered all that.

  “You have an education,” Ellenbogen had told him shortly after the new agent had arrived in Indian Territory. “You are blessed with that education. You should use that education to help your people. You know the ways of the white man. You know the ways of your tribe. You could be a tremendous help. You could be as powerful as Quanah Parker. You shouldn’t be so bitter. Remember your education, son.”

  Education? Oh, yes, Daniel remembered that, too.

  First, they sent him to the mission school near the agency. Trying to translate His Arrows Fly Straight Into The Hearts Of His Enemies was a challenge the Pale Eyes could not master, so he became Killstraight. When he was thirteen years old, two Pale Eyes in black broadcloth suits took him by the arms, led him to a spring wagon with several Arapahoes—one of them singing his death song—and told him he must go to the Carlisle Industrial School. He didn’t get to say good bye to his mother. His father had already been sent to some place called Fort Marion in some place known as Florida. Only his father refused to endure such shame, had broken free, jumped off the train, and had been shot down by bluecoats.