Whiskey Kills

by Johnny D. Boggs

  The agent started to speak again, but footfalls froze his lips, and he looked past Daniel at the door. Daniel turned to see the broad-shouldered, black-mustached interpreter framing the doorway in buckskin britches and a porkpie hat.

  “Beggin’ your pardon,” the interpreter drawled. “Didn’t know you had comp’ny.”

  Daniel looked back at the agent.

  “It’s all right, Mister Striker,” Ellenbogen said. “What is it?”

  “Well, this Penateka squaw run up after ridin’ her hoss to death. She’s beggin’ us to send Teepee That Stands Alone to heal her papa, only she don’t know where his camp is. Says her papa took bad sick, and the Penateka medicine man can’t do nothin’ for him.”

  “Teepee That Stands Alone.” After testing the name, trying to jar his memory, Ellenbogen looked at Daniel. “Isn’t he . . . ?”

  “Yes,” Daniel said. “He’s Kwahadi. His camp is in the heart of the Wichitas.”

  “That’s a right far piece,” Frank Striker said. “Want me to ask that Yankee sawbones at the fort if he feels like ridin’ all the way to Huupi?”

  “Huupi?” Daniel pushed out of his chair. He headed out the door, sliding past Frank Striker with a half-hearted pardon, looking at the corral, at the lean-to, asking the interpreter where he could find the Penateka woman. Before Striker could answer, he saw her leaning against the trunk of a large elm tree. Forgetting his headache, Daniel dashed to her. She looked up. Yes, he knew her.

  “Your father is sick?” he asked in Comanche.

  “Yes.” Tears streamed down her face. “A sickness in his belly. He spits blood. Do you know Teepee That Stands Alone?”

  “Yes,” Daniel said. “I will send for him.”

  He turned, now running for the corral, asking Ellenbogen and Striker to send a runner to the camp of Teepee That Stands Alone, telling them that he would ride to Huupi to investigate. His head hurt even more.

  “Should I ask for Major Becker’s assistance, as well?” Ellenbogen asked.

  “Yes,” Daniel said, although, after hearing the daughter’s words, after seeing the fear etched across her face, Daniel believed that there was nothing any doctor, be it a bluecoat surgeon or a revered Kwahadi puhakat, could do for the old Penateka warrior named Seven Beavers.

  Chapter Six

  As The People prepared Seven Beavers’s body for the journey to The Land Beyond The Sun, Daniel ducked inside the old Penateka’s lodge. A harsh wind battered the canvas teepee as he knelt, the piercing screams of the dead man’s daughter drowning out the songs of mourning. The stench inside soured his stomach. A good thing the wind blew so hard, he thought, else he might lose his breakfast. Squatting, swallowing down the bile, he touched the spots of dried blood on the blanket, saw where Seven Beavers had thrown up, saw where his hands had clawed into the hard ground, fighting the pain in his belly, fighting off death.

  Outside, a man’s voice boomed in guttural Comanche: “Metal Shirt! Leave this place. We must burn the lodge of the warrior who is no more.”

  That was the way of The People. They would burn most of what Seven Beavers had acquired in his life, although anything of value—his shield, perhaps, his favorite pipe, maybe a knife—would be buried with him. His medicine would be tossed away, and a good horse would be killed over his grave so he would not have to walk. Even in death, The People despised walking.

  “Hurry, Metal Shirt!” the man demanded. “There is nothing of value for you to steal.”

  True enough, Daniel thought. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for anyway. An old Comanche was dead. There was no mystery. He had gotten sick, died an agonizing death. What did he expect to find? No mystery. No crime. Why had he ridden so hard from the agency?

  His head hurt.

  Daniel knew what brought him here. He thought he had failed these people, failed Seven Beavers. He thought that arrogant Yamparika, Coyote Chaser, had ended his feud with the Penateka by poisoning him. So he came here hoping to find some evidence to prove Coyote Chaser had committed murder.

  “Metal Shirt! We will burn you with this lodge!”

  No crime has been committed here. Daniel sighed, and then he saw it.

  “Metal Shirt!”

  “Shut up,” Daniel barked back as he moved across the teepee, softly fingering the dead kitten. Calico-colored, stiff as a board, lying next to something Daniel had never dreamed he would find in Huupi. As he turned the cold piece of ceramic stoneware over, he recognized those blue stamped letters:

  Coursey & Cox Bottling Works

  Home Brewed

  GINGER BEER

  Dallas, Texas

  He lifted the bottle, shaking it, hearing some liquid, and raised it to his nose, sniffing. Whiskey. A lot had spilled out. Daniel could make out the dampness on the ground, and the kitten must have entered the teepee, and lapped it up. Blood had pooled under the calico’s head, the baby’s teeth protruding as if the skin had been pulled back tightly, leaving a snarl frozen in death.

  Outside, Daniel showed the bottle to the big-mouthed Penateka brave, who waved a torch in his right hand.

  “Was Seven Beavers drinking this whiskey?” he asked in Comanche.

  “You cannot arrest him now, Metal Shirt,” the man said. “Unless you wish to follow him on his journey.” His left hand gripped the bone handle of a knife.

  “Was Seven Beavers drinking from this bottle?” Daniel demanded. He had seen the Penateka around on his last trip south, but didn’t know the warrior’s name. A big bull of a man, with arms like oak limbs, and a brutally pockmarked face.

  “You should not speak his name, Metal Shirt. Have you no respect? Did your years among the Pale Eyes make you forget the ways of The People?”

  The Penateka was right, of course, but Daniel didn’t care. He was about to reach for his Remington, when Coyote Chaser spoke softly as he rounded the corner. “It is all right, Turuhani. Take your hand off your knife, my son. Tell this Kwahadi warrior what he wants to know.”

  “Warrior?” Turuhani scoffed, turned his head, and spit on the ground. “He is nothing but . . .”

  Coyote Chaser silenced him with a sharp rebuke.

  Turuhani pointed toward Seven Beavers’s daughter. “Yes, Ohapia found her father in his lodge. He complained that he had a fire in his belly . . . that the whiskey must have started it. Ohapia threw the bottle across the lodge. I tried to make the demon leave his stomach, but the blood poured from his mouth as he coughed. I could not put out the fire inside.”

  “You are a puhakat,” Daniel said. A little young, Daniel thought, to be a medicine man.

  The man straightened. “I am. I have not abandoned the ways of The People.”

  “Unlike the man who must make the journey to The Land Beyond The Sun,” Coyote Chaser said.

  The two spoke briefly, and Coyote Chaser asked Daniel: “Is it all right if Turuhani burns this lodge?”

  With a nod, Daniel stepped away from the teepee, holding the bottle at his side. Coyote Chaser motioned him to follow, and they walked toward the brush arbor to get out of the cold wind.

  “Have you seen this bottle?” Daniel asked.

  “I have seen ones like it,” the Yamparika answered.

  Coyote Chaser looked beyond Daniel as the flames devoured Seven Beavers’s home, and snorted. “Look at that. Made of the ugly cloth the bluecoats use for their tents. Not of buffalo hide.” He shook his head. “A Yamparika would never live in such a place. It is good that we burn it. It is good that I never have to mention his name again.”

  “You hated him,” Daniel said.

  Coyote Chaser shook his head. “I hate what he had become. I hate what many of The People have become.”

  He sounded a lot like Teepee That Stands Alone.

  “The place where I dwell would offend you, too,” Daniel said.

  “You, I can understand,” Coyote Chaser said. “The Pale Eyes took you from your father and mother. They sent you to live with their kind for a long time. You are not to blam
e for all you have forgotten, all you have lost. But that Penateka.” He grunted, and said nothing more.

  Daniel lifted the bottle. “I found this in his lodge. A baby cat lay beside it. It was dead.”

  “Good. A cat is a Pale Eyes pest, good for nothing except feeding coyotes and hawks. The Penateka of whom we speak”—Coyote Chaser was careful not to speak the name of the dead—“he had many such pests to play with. What good is a cat? Dogs have much purpose. Not as valuable as a horse, but good animals to have in a camp. But cats? Worthless. As worthless as the man who is no more.”

  “I think that the whiskey in the bottle killed both that man and the baby cat.”

  Coyote Chaser stared in silence, his black eyes not blinking until the burning teepee collapsed, and he looked back at the flames.

  “I think the whiskey in this bottle was bad. Poison.”

  Another grunt came from the old man. “Pale Eyes whiskey kills,” he said at last.

  An image of Sehebi appeared in Daniel’s mind. His head dropped. “In many ways,” he said, but Coyote Chaser did not hear.

  “Do you know where the old Penateka got this whiskey?” he asked after a minute.

  Coyote Chaser remained silent for a long while. “Perhaps it is better this way,” he finally said. “To die now. Before he was too old to be useful. So old he would be abandoned by The People, cast out to die. Yes,” said the Yap Eater as he walked away. “Yes, this was better.”

  * * * * *

  He would make his report to Agent Ellenbogen, then take the whiskey bottle to Major Becker at Fort Sill. Perhaps Becker could examine the remnants of the liquid, tell Daniel what had killed Seven Beavers and the kitten. Bad whiskey wasn’t new to Indian Territory. Daniel had heard of such things. Traders often doctored the liquor they sold to Indians with chewing tobacco or turpentine, ammonia or gunpowder, cut-off snake heads or strychnine—sometimes all of those. Creek whiskey wasn’t high-grade, but, as far as Daniel knew, no Comanche had ever died from it, at least not as Seven Beavers had died. Creek whiskey had never killed a kitten.

  Agent Ellenbogen would file a complaint, and the federal marshals would track down Blake Browne and Uvalde Ted Smith and arrest them. Maybe they would be charged with manslaughter. Probably not. That would be hoping for too much. But the Pale Eyes law would put those two vermin behind bars for a long time.

  Maybe.

  It was a plan, at least, a start, a way to avenge not only Sehebi, but also Seven Beavers, and that’s why Daniel almost dropped the ceramic stoneware bottle on the floor of the agency when he saw Blake Browne standing in front of Agent Ellenbogen’s desk.

  “That’s him!” said Browne, equally startled. “That’s the red nigger that burned my wagon. And all my tradin’ supplies. That’s him, damn it!”

  Browne’s face remained puffy, bruised, with a bandage wrapped around his head. His lips were split, swollen, so misshapen that Daniel could barely understand his words, and Browne grimaced upon completion of his outburst, and lifted a finger to his mouth.

  “Reckon I’ll just arrest the son-of-a-bitch now.” A big man stepped from the corner, out of the shadows, putting a gloved right hand on the butt of a revolver while his left withdrew heavy iron bracelets that must have been tucked behind his back.

  “Now, hold on here, just one minute, Ranger,” Ellenbogen said.

  “Red nigger,” Blake Browne added. “Damned Comanche butcher.”

  “And, you, too, Mister Browne. You will watch your filthy language in my office, sir.”

  Daniel focused on the Ranger. A Tejano, duck trousers stuffed in brown stovepipe boots, a badge made of a Mexican peso pinned to the lapel of his striped vest. A giant of a man with red hair that touched his shoulders, and a slightly darker mustache and underlip beard, and several days of beard covering the rest of his sun-beaten face. His eyes were blue, the cold blue of a killer, and Daniel knew this Texas Ranger hated his guts.

  “Daniel.” Ellenbogen cleared his throat. “Daniel.” He wet his lips, pulled on his beard, tried to think of what to say, how to explain.

  Daniel didn’t wait. “Seven Beavers is dead,” he reported, and held out the bottle. “This is what killed him.” He stared across the room at Blake Browne.

  “I don’t know no Seven Beavers,” the whiskey runner said.

  “Do you know this?” Daniel shook the bottle.

  “Never seen it before.” Above and below the bandage on Blake Browne’s head beads of sweat popped out.

  “Your wagon was full of these,” Daniel said.

  “My wagon was full of trade goods.” Browne had turned to look at Ellenbogen, telling the agent, defending himself, not daring to look at Daniel again: “I had beads and blankets, and I got a permit to trade to the Injuns, sell them quality merchandise they can’t find on this side of the Red River. And that’s what I was doin’. I done showed you my permit. I been treatin’ with Injuns since ’Forty-Four, back when Texas was still a Republic. I was comin’ back from my latest trading, and this buck comes up and ambushes us. Ran off my damned partner. Uvalde up and quit me. Too scared to hire on with me no more. Reckon I can’t rightly blame him at all, but I got my rights, and I swore out a complaint in Wichita Falls.”

  “Which is where we’re taking him,” the Texas Ranger said.

  “You have no jurisdiction here, sir,” Ellenbogen said.

  “I got enough,” the Ranger replied.

  “Jurisdiction.” Without turning away from Ellenbogen, Browne pointed at Daniel. “What jurisdiction did this buck have when he burned my supplies, my wagon? No thievin’ Comanch’ can arrest no white man. That’s the law. You know it’s the law.”

  He stopped, rubbed his jaw, swallowed, and continued, but without the force. “He burned my wagon. Destroyed all my blankets and beads and such. And Ranger Quantrell is haulin’ him back to Wichita Falls to stand trial.” He paused. “Lessen you want to make things right by me here. Else, I might have to report you to the Department of the Interior.”

  “Mister Browne,” Ellenbogen said. “Ranger Quantrell.” He stopped again, started massaging both temples. He wasn’t used to confrontation, Daniel decided, didn’t know what to do, how to act, what authority he had.

  Yet the agent surprised him, lowering his hands, trying to stand a little straighter. “Do not threaten me, Mister Browne, because I can easily have your so-called permit revoked, sir. And you speak of jurisdiction, well, let me remind you that, when you took the ferry across the Red River, you left Texas.”

  “I got a right,” Browne said, “to get paid for what I lost.”

  “And if, Mister Browne, we rode to the site of your burned wagons, I am sure we would find not the charred remnants of beads and blankets, but bottles that once contained contraband liquor. Bottles such as the one Daniel holds in his hand.”

  The Ranger sniggered. “How does that whiskey taste, boy?”

  He lost his temper. Sent the bottle flying. Catching, for just a moment, the frightened look in the Ranger’s face as he ducked. Then Daniel was charging across the room, lowering his shoulder, hearing first Browne’s shriek, then a grunt as Daniel slammed into Browne, wrapping his arms around the whiskey runner’s waist and sending them both sailing over Ellenbogen’s desk.

  He didn’t remember anything else until cold water fell across his face, and his eyes opened to reveal Leviticus Ellenbogen kneeling over him.

  * * * * *

  When he tried to seek out the burning, pounding spot behind his left ear, Daniel’s arms felt heavy. Iron manacles bit into his wrists, tight, almost cutting off the flow of blood.

  “Are you all right?” Ellenbogen said. He held a rag, dripping water, in his right hand. The Ranger, the big man named Quantrell, shoved the agent aside, and jerked Daniel to his feet.

  “Come on, boy,” he said, “it’s time to light a shuck for Texas. You’re under arrest.”

  Fighting off dizziness and nausea, Daniel turned toward Ellenbogen.

  “You didn’t tel
l me you went beyond the reservation,” Ellenbogen said. He lifted the arrest warrant. “This says you were in Texas when you burned that wagon.” A heavy sigh followed. “I have been told to comply . . .”

  The Ranger pushed Daniel toward his horse. “We’re hauling your hide to Wichita Falls, buck,” the Ranger said. “And I just pray to the Almighty that you try to escape.”

  Chapter Seven

  They would kill him long before they ever reached Wichita Falls. Daniel wondered if he should start singing his death song, wondered if he had a death song. No. That was not the way of The People. He wouldn’t let the red-headed Ranger and miserable Blake Browne shoot him. He’d fight. Like his father had fought, and died, for freedom. Die as a man. Die really trying to escape rather than be shot in the back and have the Ranger say he had been killed trying to escape. Die like Nermernuh!

  The Ranger rode alongside him, pointing the huge barrels of a Greener shotgun at Daniel. Up ahead rode Blake Browne. Grinning, the Ranger thumbed back one of the hammers, as if he had read Daniel’s mind.

  Suddenly the Ranger turned, looking down the trail. A ploy, Daniel figured. Trying to coax Daniel into making his play. Yet the Ranger reined up, still looking northeast, and wrapped his reins around the horn, then pulled back the Greener’s other hammer.

  “Hold up, Browne. You, too, Injun.”

  Daniel tugged the hackamore, wetting his lips, watching a rider on a bay horse lope down the trail. Blake Browne nudged his big mule past Daniel, stopping beside the Ranger.

  “You know him?” the Ranger asked.

  “Can’t make him out,” the whiskey runner said, “but he’s a white man.”

  Sunlight reflected off something on the rider’s lapel, and Browne swore. “Hell, he’s a lawdog.”

  “Maybe.”

  The rider slowed the bay’s pace about one hundred rods away, raising a gloved right hand. As he approached, Daniel could indeed make out a six-point star pinned to his unbuttoned coat. He could also make out the lawman—a big man, tall, wearing a high-crowned hat that the weather had beaten as much as it had battered his grizzled face. The man let the bay walk the last few yards, tugging on his mustache a moment, before dropping his right hand beside a holstered revolver.