Whiskey Kills

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “Looking for a cavalry patrol,” Daniel said.

  “Gonna ambush them?”

  Daniel shook his head with amusement.

  “I got the letter that Ellenbogen gent mailed,” Gunter said, and Daniel’s amusement faded. Well, he thought, at least the agent mailed the letters.

  “Struck me as interesting,” Gunter said. “Especially after what I found up ’round Stinking Creek.” Gunter pointed to a stand of elms. “Let’s get out of the wind. Compare notes.”

  * * * * *

  “What strikes me peculiar,” Gunter said, “is that you ain’t seen many Creek whiskey runners in your territory. That ain’t like the Creeks.”

  “Maybe they’ve seen the light.” Daniel drank from an Army-issue canteen.

  “Now, you’re trying to be funny,” Gunter said. “Creeks have been busy aplenty in the Choctaw and Cherokee nations. So when I got that letter you asked your agent to write, I started doing me some investigating. Asked around in places like the Seminole Agency, Cummings, Limestone Gap, along the KATY line, and over by Fort Holmes, Johnson, and the Negro Settlement.”

  “Covering a lot of ground,” Daniel said.

  “That’s right. So’s I can bill the United States Indian Police for all the miles I rode. And my wife and children like it more when I ain’t in sight. Seems that the Creek whiskey peddlers have been busy elsewhere, but not down here.”

  “Too busy to pester us,” Daniel said.

  “Maybe. But I ain’t told you what I found ’round Stinking Creek.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Plan to. I found me a couple of dead Creeks. Wagon burned, with all the whiskey in it. Remind you of anything?”

  Daniel dug out his writing tablet and pencil. Stinking Creek lay in the western edge of the Chickasaw Nation, not far from the Comanche reservation. “Maybe the Chickasaws are as tired of whiskey runners as we are.”

  “As you are,” Gunter corrected.

  “You think I killed those two runners?”

  Gunter snorted. “That ain’t your style, Daniel. And I don’t think you give a tinker’s dam what’s going on in the Chickasaw Nation. What struck me peculiar was the way them two Creeks . . . well, one of them looked more like a half-breed . . . was laid out. Shirts stripped off, and their backs was all whipped. Whipped before they was dead or after, I don’t know. But that ain’t all. Then they got hauled up like they was deer carcasses thrown up a tree . . . after they had expired, I warrant . . . to bleed ’em out. Throats cut. Hanging from tree branches. Filled with arrows. Ain’t what I’d call a robbery.”

  “No,” Daniel said.

  “What I’d call, maybe, a warning.”

  Daniel wrote in his tablet. He said: “Stay out of the Chickasaw Nation.”

  “Maybe so. Or maybe they was on their way to or from your country. Maybe the message was keep out of Comanche land.”

  “That’s . . .” Daniel shook his head.

  “See, this Creek I know on Goat Creek, he gives me some stories sometimes, for a greenback or tobacco or maybe if I don’t arrest him, and he says the Creeks been asked to keep out of your country.”

  Daniel considered this, then thought of something Ellenbogen and Becker kept telling him. “I don’t think you could get an indictment with that.”

  “How about with this?” Gunter reached into his frock coat pocket and pulled out a long whip of braided thong, fastened to a handle made of the polished bone.

  Cow bone, Daniel thought. Years ago, The People would have always used a buffalo bone, but the buffalo had all but vanished. The braided leather whip felt old, but the bone seemed rather new.

  “It ain’t Chickasaw,” Gunter said, “and it ain’t Cherokee or Creek.”

  “It’s Comanche,” Daniel said.

  “’Tain’t yours, I hope.”

  Daniel handed the whip back to Gunter. “I never cared much for whips.”

  “I don’t think them two Creeks cared much for this one, neither.” He rolled the thong over the handle, and stuck the whip back in his coat pocket. “I buried the dead men where I found ’em, will drop off a report at Fort Arbuckle on my way back home. I didn’t think two dead whiskey runners was anything to work up a sweat over. Don’t think nobody in the Chickasaw Nation will give a damn, either.”

  He thought of the arrows. “Comanche arrows? The arrows in those Creeks? Were they Comanche?”

  “Yep. Dogwood shafts, turkey feathers, metal points.”

  It started raining, cold, hard drops. Daniel pulled his hat tighter, and rubbed his jaw. “What was the whiskey in?” Daniel asked.

  “Told you. A wagon. Piss-poor pathetic one at . . .”

  “No. The containers. Ceramic bottles?”

  Gunter nodded, and Daniel felt his heartbeat increase. “Sure, ceramic bottles. Glass bottles, too. A couple of jugs, one keg, a little bottle for medicine, a gourd, two . . .”

  Daniel stopped listening. It didn’t matter. He wrapped the Old Glory writing tablet in oilskin paper, and slipped the pad and pencil in his saddlebag.

  “What was you looking for soldier boys for?” Gunter asked. The two men mounted, and rode north.

  “We’ve been finding a lot of beer bottles,” Daniel said. “Same bottles . . . full of whiskey.” He described the bottle. Gunter showed no recognition. The rain fell harder.

  “The doctor at Fort Sill says a soldier named O’Malley was busted for drunkenness on duty.” As he explained, Daniel reached behind him to pull out a bottle he had stuck in his saddlebags. “He was drinking out of one of those ginger beer bottles. I wanted to ask him where he got it.”

  Gunter laughed. “You think he’d tell you?”

  “I was hoping I might persuade him. The People can be persuasive about some things.”

  The Cherokee’s laugh grew louder. “Daniel, I ain’t never seen this side of you. I think you’re growing up.” He pointed to the sky, and raised his voice. “About to come a turd float, Daniel. We best find some shelter on some high ground.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Never cared much for ginger beer,” Hugh Gunter said. “Too hot, too spicy. Beer ought to be cool, easy to drink. Got little use for Choctaws, but they do know how to cook up a decent brew. Choc can be a fine tonic. Cures just about everything, or that’s what the coal miners tell me. That’s who the Choctaws sell most of their Choc to. Never cured me of nothing, though. Not enough alcohol in it to cure a cold.”

  Daniel wasn’t interested in Choctaws or their beer. He waited for Gunter to pass the ceramic stoneware bottle back to him.

  “Where’d you pick that one up?” Gunter returned the bottle.

  “Ben Buffalo Bone found it at the lodge of one of The People,” Daniel said. “I’m finding them everywhere.”

  The thunderstorm had passed quickly, pounding the ground with large, painful raindrops while bending the trees with a blistering wind in a fury, then blowing its way southeast, heralding the arrival of an early spring. In the coolness of approaching evening, the bright white orb sank behind long, purple clouds. Pushing north, Daniel and Gunter headed back to the agency near Fort Sill.

  Gunter removed his tall hat, and ran his long fingers through his long graying hair. Meticulously he fastened the hat atop his head, and went on about Choctaw beer, about the tobacco and fish berries they put in it for flavor and color. Maybe more. Daniel stopped listening until the old Cherokee asked: “You know anything about this bottle works place in Dallas?”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “Me, neither. Seems that would be the place to start your investigation. Dallas, Texas. Hell-hole. Like most of that God-awful state full of God-awful Texicans.”

  “My lawyer told me Dallas is too far away for whiskey runners.”

  The wicked grin that immediately spread across Gunter’s face told Daniel he had made another mistake. The Cherokee turned his horse closer to Daniel, gave a loud whistle, and slapped Daniel’s wet back.

  “You didn’t told me you had yourself a
lawyer, Daniel. My-oh-my, ain’t you coming up in the world. A pettifogging lawyer. Dtyhh, we say in Cherokee. Means quarreler. How much did that quarreler charge you for that priceless piece of information and advice?”

  Shaking his head, Daniel sighed, which only made Gunter laugh harder.

  “He didn’t quarrel too much,” Daniel said when Gunter’s cackling died down, and added a moment later, “I think.”

  “Well, your friendly dtyhh is absolutely right,” Gunter said as they forded a small creek. “Now, mostly the whiskey runners I run across . . . them that ain’t Creeks . . . light out from Van Buren or Coffeyville to the north. Down south, they come from Spanish Fort and Denison City.”

  “And Wichita Falls,” Daniel added.

  “There, too. Mostly to your people. They don’t get to us civilized nations.”

  “How about Greer County?” Daniel asked. “Do you know of any runners operating out of Greer County?”

  “I don’t know a damned thing about Greer County,” Gunter said. “Don’t want to, neither. But you’re making me lose my train of thought with all your interruptions. We was talking about these two Coursey and . . . what’s the other name again?”

  “Cox. Is that considered one of my interruptions?”

  “Damnation, Daniel. Not only is you getting more notional and confrontational, you are becoming a real pain-in-my-arse smart aleck.”

  Daniel laughed.

  “All right,” Gunter said, “yes, most whiskey runners don’t hail from Dallas, but these bottles do. So that’s what I mean, best place to start is Dallas, Texas. First, though, I’d suggest we make camp, get a fire going, dry off. Don’t want to catch our death.”

  “Let’s ride a little more,” Daniel said.

  “You got any food?”

  “Some pemmican. Some jerky.” He turned to face the Cherokee. “No Choc.”

  “I got some coffee. And three, four stale biscuits that won’t break too many teeth. Veritable feast.”

  They were riding through a long path in some woods. “There’s a pasture once we get out of this woods road,” Daniel said. “A creek beyond that. We’ll camp there.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  After slowing his horse, Daniel reached into his saddlebag, and withdrew his writing tablet and pencil. The buckskin had a smooth, easy gait, had seldom showed any notional and confrontational tendencies, so Daniel draped the reins in front of his saddle, flipped to an open page, and started writing.

  “So what all do we have, other than these ginger beer bottles full of rot-gut?” Gunter asked.

  “A dead Penateka,” Daniel said. “Poisoned by bad whiskey.”

  Gunter snorted. “And two dead Creeks.”

  Daniel stuck the pencil behind his hear, and flipped back a page. He read: “Stay out of Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache reservation. Like that informant told you.”

  Gunter nodded.

  “So those two dead whiskey runners you found were killed after they had come into our land?”

  “It’s possible. Ain’t certain. But Chickasaws usually don’t get angry enough over Creeks to do them that way.” Gunter shook his head. “Nobody often gets angry enough to do nobody that way.”

  Absently Daniel chewed on the pencil until he could taste the wood, and remembered a school mother back at Carlisle jerking a pencil from his mouth, snapping at him: “Pencils are for writing, Daniel. Not eating. This horrible habit of yours must cease at once!”

  He wrote again. Stopped. Turned to look at the Cherokee. “But that whip you found. It was Comanche. Those Creeks were killed by one of The People.”

  First Gunter nodded, next shook his head, then spun his head in a circular movement. Daniel thought he might be drunk on memories of that Choc beer. “Yes,” Gunter said, staring ahead. “They were murdered by a Comanche. The whip says so.” His voice changed as he looked at Daniel. “Or maybe that whip was left behind to make a body think that the heinous crime was perpetrated by you heathen savages.”

  A feeling of stupidity swept across Daniel.

  “How do you people pay for the whiskey you drink?” Gunter asked.

  Daniel shrugged. “Barter,” he said, frowning, remembering some of The People who would sell their wives, their daughters, so lost were they without that taibo whiskey.

  “So the killer maybe picked up that whip for a bottle of ginger beer. Then shot down two Creeks infringing on his territory. Left the whip behind so all of us really intelligent peace officers would go arrest the first Comanche buck we found.”

  Daniel was thinking of something else. “Where’s Uvalde?”

  Gunter shrugged. “Don’t rightly know. Texas some place, I think. South a ways. Maybe in Mexico. Why?”

  “When I found the white man, Blake Browne, when I burned his wagon . . .”

  “And beat the bitter hell out of him.”

  “Now who’s interrupting!”

  With a humorous bow, Gunter apologized.

  “The young man that was riding with him, Browne called him Uvalde.” Daniel turned back to the first page of the Old Glory tablet. “Uvalde Ted Smith.”

  “Name don’t ring a bell.”

  “He could be from Uvalde.”

  “That’s possible. Downright likely. Mister Ted Smith’s been to Uvalde, at least.”

  “So the whiskey runners could be operating out of Uvalde.” Daniel stopped, shook his head. “No. Not if it’s south. If Dallas is too far for whiskey runners . . .”

  “You’d have to ask Uvalde Ted Smith,” Gunter said, “and I never heard of him.”

  “How about Dakota?”

  “That’s north of here. A good ways north.”

  “No, have you ever heard of a man named Dakota?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “Blake Browne mentioned him, as well. I think he’s a whiskey runner.”

  “You’re starting to think everybody’s running whiskey.”

  Silence.

  “So where does your soldier boy fit in?”

  He had to think for a moment, before remembering the trooper from the Fort Sill hospital.

  “Fenn O’Malley.” Daniel tested the name. “When he was busted, the major at Fort Sill said, he had a bottle of ginger beer. Hit a sergeant in the jaw while holding the bottle. Broke the sergeant’s jaw, and broke the fingers on O’Malley’s right hand.”

  “Right intelligent practitioner of fisticuffs, this O’Malley,” Gunter said. A moment later he added: “That ginger beer sure is omniscient.”

  “Omnipresent,” Daniel corrected.

  “Watch them interruptions, Sergeant Killstraight. Else I might not give you something to ponder.”

  The woods road they had been following dumped into a prairie, and they startled a few longhorn cattle. Thunder rolled in the distance, but the skies ahead remained clear. Daniel had to gather the reins as they turned, and waited until they had cleared the cattle before he dropped the reins again, and wrote some more.

  “What outfit is your potato-eating trooper with?” Gunter asked.

  “Seventh Cavalry.”

  “Fairly new to your fort, ain’t they?”

  Daniel had to think. “I guess so.”

  “Custer’s old outfit.”

  “I knew that.” Back at Carlisle, the Lakota boys always bragged about how they had wiped out Yellow Hair on the Greasy Grass. What great bluecoat chief did you ever kill? they’d ask Daniel and boys from the other tribes.

  “I think they was stationed,” Gunter was saying, “or used to be stationed, or are still headquartered out of Fort Abraham Lincoln. That’s in Dakota Territory. Don’t know where Uvalde is, but I do know that for certain.”

  He chewed the pencil again, but when he started to write in the notebook, Gunter stopped him.

  “It could be that this bluebelly is called Dakota, but that sure ain’t certain. He could be from County Cork or Wisconsin. He could have just enlisted over in Missouri or Alabama. He might never been to Dakota, might not
never have heard of Dakota, especially if he’s just some poor, ignorant Irish farmer fresh off the boat. Hell, he could be from Uvalde, for all that we know. All that be is a theory.”

  “I understand that,” Daniel said.

  “Well, here’s something I understand, Daniel. Granted, it’s just theory, too, but I’ve been studying hard on it since that thunderstorm, and been thinking about it since I found those dead Creeks. The Creeks have been warned to keep their whiskey off your reservation. Two Creeks are dead. Maybe they was killed as a warning, too. That tells me that somebody is claiming the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Reservation as their territory. They want it for themselves.”

  “Why?”

  Gunter shrugged. “Money.”

  “Why not spread into the Chickasaw Nation?” Daniel said.

  “Fair question. But they might be like locusts. Start at one place, eat everything that’s green, then move with the wind. Could be they want to start small, and your reservation’s fairly small, fairly new, pretty wild, and wildly lawless. Good place to get your whiskey business started, and you people . . . no offense . . . tend to have a thirst for whiskey. Judge Parker’s deputies don’t ride over here that often. The government’ll likely divide up this court before long, if that Senator Dawes and his crew ain’t butchered up Indian country before then. Anyway, we keep Harvey P. Noble and his pals right busy in the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Cherokee Nations. I got no authority here. I ain’t slighting you, Daniel, or your tribal police, but, if I wanted to get me a toehold in Indian Territory, was I of mind to peddle whiskey, I might start my business in this country.”

  “The Army patrols for whiskey runners, too.”

  “Piss on them bluecoats,” Gunter said. “Texas Rangers and Texas sheriffs likely keep an eye out for them south of the Red River.”

  The face of Carl Quantrell appeared before Daniel.

  “That ain’t ginger beer, and it certainly ain’t Choc, they’s filling them bottles with,” Gunter said. “These whiskey runners are big.”

  “And organized.”

  “More so than the Creeks.” Gunter shook his head and spit. “Hell, I never arrested no Creek that’d ever fill that bill. Organized. Now, don’t get me wrong, Daniel. I’m not fretting that two whiskey runners got cut up and strung up and shot up over in the Chickasaw Nation, not when I got murderers and robbers and rapists to hunt down, but that’s my territory, and I don’t like that.”