Whiskey Kills

by Johnny D. Boggs

  He thought of Patty Mullen, tried to stand again, still couldn’t, fell back, and yelled: “Patty! Patty! It’s all over.” The last sentence was barely a whisper. That practically drained him, and he lay down, staring at the sky.

  Roughly, Teepee That Stands Alone said: “Then I will take his scalp.”

  Somewhere deep within him, Daniel gathered the strength to sit up, if not stand. He saw Patty Mullen, slowly limping, uncertain, unsteadily, through the high grass. Teepee That Stands Alone knelt over the dead trooper’s body, and Daniel shouted: “No. You will not touch this man!”

  The old puhakat turned slowly, with disgust. “You are not of The People. You have forgotten our ways.”

  “You are the one who has forgotten, old man,” Daniel said angrily, and he made himself stand, made himself tall, kept himself, somehow, on his feet.

  “I do not keep his scalp,” Teepee That Stands Alone said. “I keep nothing of the Pale Eyes.”

  “You lie.”

  Teepee That Stands Alone straightened, took a wild step toward Daniel, willed himself to stop.

  “I found the iron at your brush arbor,” Daniel said. “Iron from the hoops for Pale Eyes barrels. The iron you got at ration day when you came for your wife. Iron you used to make the points of the arrows. The arrows that the Cherokee, Hugh Gunter, found in the Creek whiskey runners. You killed those Creeks.”

  Teepee That Stands Alone shoved the knife into its sheath.

  “They brought the whiskey that stole my son from me,” the old man said. “They brought the whiskey that stole . . .” His voice cracked. “My granddaughter. My . . . beautiful . . . granddaughter.”

  Daniel shook his head. “No. They were bad men, yes, but they did not sell that whiskey to your son who goes to The Land Beyond The Sun.” He pointed at Fenn O’Malley. “This was that man.” Pointed at Nácutsi. “He helped, too.” And tilted his head toward the road. “And that one.”

  “I have avenged my son,” said Teepee That Stands Alone. “I have avenged my granddaughter. It is the way of the Kwahadi.”

  Patty Mullen gagged at the sight of the two dead man. She swallowed, searched Daniel’s eyes. “Where’s . . . ?” she began, looking at the road, finding Coyne, gasping. “Mister Ellenbogen?” She struggled with the words. “Mister Caldwell?”

  Daniel shook his head. He was certain Nácutsi had killed the deputy commissioner before returning to hunt down Patty and him. “Sit down,” he told her, and looked back at the Kwahadi holy man.

  “Is it the way of the Kwahadi to make others think that someone else killed those Creeks?” he said, feeling sick, light-headed, maybe even broken-hearted. “My friend Hugh Gunter found the whip you used on those Creeks. The leather was old, but the bone handle was new. A cow bone. I found the buffalo bone, the handle you first made years ago for that whip, in your brush arbor. You changed the handle. You left it behind. Made it seem as if another warrior of The People killed those men. Like me.” He looked at Fenn O’Malley’s corpse, felt a dry laugh coming, shook his head. “Everybody wanted the Pale Eyes to think I was killing whiskey men.” Glaring again at the puhakat. “Yes, old man, you learned much from the Pale Eyes.”

  Teepee That Stands Alone’s eyes became slits.

  “You always boasted of how you were better than all of The People,” Daniel said. “You were no different than Coyote Chaser in that regard. You said you took nothing from the Pale Eyes. But that man standing in line at the last ration day was right. You have no puha. What’s more, you have no pride.”

  “I will show you my power,” the old man said defiantly, and reached again for his knife.

  “You rode the Iron Horse to Texas, old man. I never thought about it until now. Why would the great Teepee That Stands Alone do that? Ride a Pale Eyes train. Stay in a Pale Eyes hotel. Drink coffee, and eat the hard bread of Long Knives. All would destroy your power. Unless your power was already destroyed.”

  The hand clenched on the bone handle of the knife.

  “You collected rations for your wife.” Finally Daniel’s words stopped the puhakat’s hand. “Rations from the Pale Eyes. Which you used yourself. To make arrows. You also used the bone of a taibo cow to make a new handle for your whip. You used these as a Pale Eyes would use them, too, used them as you used your own tongue, as crooked, as false, as many Pale Eyes tongues. The great Teepee That Stands Alone uses nothing from a Pale Eyes. That is your lie. Your wife even has a taibo name. Grace, she calls herself.” He hated bringing that nice Comanche woman into this, but the result was what he needed. The puhakat’s shoulders collapsed, the arms dropped to his sides, his head bowed. “Quanah Parker always sought your counsel. We respected you, Teepee That Stands Alone. We loved you. But you shamed us. You shamed yourself. You destroyed your power.”

  When the Kwahadi looked up, Daniel was the one who felt shamed, shamed by the tears streaming down the old man’s face. “You say what your heart tells you,” Teepee That Stands Alone said. “But think of what your heart would have told you to do had your granddaughter been killed as mine died. My power is destroyed. What you say is true. I knew it would be destroyed when I rode this trail.”

  Daniel hung his head. “I cannot say that I blame you,” he said. His head rose. “I will protect you as best as I can. This I will do for Grace Morning Star. My heart could not stand seeing her mourn again. Maybe I will do this for Teepee That Stands Alone, for what he once was. But I cannot do this if you take this man’s scalp. I cannot do this if your vengeance does not end. Here.”

  “It is done.” The medicine man’s voice sounded like thunder, and he turned away. “I am finished.”

  * * * * *

  Daniel struggled with the tight collar and tie, then gave up, gently crossed his legs, and tried to keep from shaking. He sat in the judge’s quarters at Fort Smith, holding the cane Major Becker had given him for his wounded leg. On either side of him sat Hugh Gunter and Harvey Noble. All three watched a tall man in a blue suit rolling a cigar in his fingers, talking in hushed tones with the judge who oversaw the Western District of Arkansas, which included Indian Territory.

  A lifetime later, Judge Isaac C. Parker and the taller man walked toward the sofa, and settled into chairs across from the three peace officers from Indian Territory.

  “Gentlemen.” Judge Parker looked older than Daniel had imagined, like a man weighted down with an anvil, but his voice resonated with strength and dignity. It was a voice that had reminded him of Teepee That Stands Alone, before that day in the Wichitas. “You know Solicitor Bates, I presume.”

  Still rolling the cigar in his left hand, Bates reached across a table with his right, smiling at Daniel. “I haven’t had the pleasure, Sergeant Killstraight.”

  Daniel set the cane aside. The man had a brutal grip.

  “I wish our meeting could have been under less somber conditions,” Judge Parker said gravely. “A terrible affair, what happened on the reservation. A deputy Indian commissioner gunned down and scalped. A fine man like Leviticus Ellenbogen assassinated by an Army deserter and whiskey runner.”

  “Ellenbogen died a hero,” Bates reminded the judge.

  “He saved my life,” Daniel said. Which wasn’t a lie.

  “A hero.” Bates retired the unlit cigar into his breast pocket. “As we speak, his body is on a special train to Albany, to lie in state for a week before being transported to our national cemetery near Washington City.”

  “He fought in the late war to preserve our Union,” Judge Parker said. “Was wounded twice. A fine, bold, and highly principled man with a grand heart, and the mettle of a Hercules.”

  Daniel wet his lips. He hadn’t known that Ellenbogen had been a soldier in the Civil War. Hadn’t known anything, really, about Leviticus Ellenbogen.

  “Patricia Mullen could not tell us much about the final events in the Wichita Mountains,” Bates said, coming to business. “She was hiding for much of this gun battle.”

  “You are to be commended, Sergeant, for sav
ing her life,” the judge interrupted.

  “Indeed,” Bates agreed.

  Daniel shifted in his seat, tried to gather enough saliva to swallow.

  “There is, however,” Bates said, “much we don’t understand.”

  Daniel nodded, hoped Gunter or Noble would say something, but they had become wooden statues. “There is much,” Daniel began, “that I do not understand.”

  “What can you tell us?” Judge Parker said.

  “Start with the gun battle, Sergeant,” Bates said.

  So Daniel began his lie, leaving Teepee That Stands Alone out of the story. He started with the truth, how Ellenbogen had grabbed Vaughan Coyne’s gun, saving Daniel’s life, then pushed the lawyer off the surrey, but had been shot by O’Malley, releasing the brake, spooking the horses, the wagon running over Coyne, crushing his skull. Commissioner Caldwell had fled, only to be shot down by Nácutsi. Daniel kept Nácutsi’s death pretty close to the truth, too, but said he had killed O’Malley, had shot him with the Remington. He only hoped he had persuaded Patty Mullen to say the same thing, to forget about the three arrows she had seen in the dead deserter’s chest and stomach. To forget Teepee That Stands Alone had been there.

  They had buried the dead whiskey runners near the road, but returned the bodies of Ellenbogen and the commissioner to Fort Sill. Relatives had claimed the remains of Ellenbogen and Caldwell, but he doubted if anyone would dig up Fenn O’Malley and realize the man had been killed with arrows, not bullets.

  “I was lucky,” Daniel concluded, “but, again, I would not be alive had it not been for Agent Ellenbogen’s bravery.”

  Neither judge nor solicitor said anything for a minute. The clock chimed, and Judge Parker cleared his throat. “This O’Malley and the lawyer were part of a whiskey-running gang?”

  “In a dice game, Fenn O’Malley won the Coursey and Cox Bottling Works and ginger beer brewery,” Daniel said, a little more comfortable with the truth. “When everything got bogged down in the courts, O’Malley hired Coyne. They had known each other in Dakota Territory.”

  “Yes,” Bates said. “Miss Mullen uncovered the court records in Dallas that connected O’Malley with Coyne, but Coyne was hired before, as you say, things ‘got bogged down.’ After O’Malley killed the gambler, he hired Coyne as his defense counsel. Coyne got that charge dismissed after a preliminary hearing. Also, I have a statement from a soldier named Brinkerhoff that says he recognized Coyne from Dakota, and that Coyne had indeed served as the late O’Malley’s counselor on a whiskey-running charge there.”

  Daniel nodded. “I remembered something when we were in the Wichita Mountains, when I looked back at my notes. When I first spoke to Vaughan Coyne, I told him about the bottles I had found in Blake Browne’s wagon. All Coursey and Cox bottles. He said . . . ‘That’s a lot of ginger beer.’ But I never told him the bottles were ginger beer, just beer. That’s something he shouldn’t have known, not as a Wichita Falls resident. At least that’s how I see it. I just didn’t see it until I was looking over my notes.”

  “Always a smart thing to do.” A crooked smile appeared underneath Harvey Noble’s giant mustache.

  “I don’t know when they got the idea to run whiskey,” Daniel said. “Probably when they had all these empty bottles, a bankrupt bottling plant and brewery. I suspect it was O’Malley’s idea, but I’m not sure. Maybe Vaughan Coyne had helped O’Malley run whiskey in Dakota, too. We do know that O’Malley sold whiskey often.”

  Bates’s head bobbed slightly. “And often to the Indians.”

  Daniel paused. Hugh Gunter decided to take over.

  “We also know, Judge, that these Wichita Falls boys had gotten word to the Creeks, told them to keep out of the Comanche reservation. Apparently they wanted that country for their own.”

  “At least till they ran out of ginger beer bottles,” Noble added.

  “So they killed those two Creek Indians that Mister Gunter discovered in the Choctaw Nation,” Judge Parker said. “As warning?”

  Gunter nodded. “That appears to be the size of it.”

  “And Blake Browne?” Bates asked. “And the other murdered whiskey runner . . . um, Horace Benson? They killed those two men as well?”

  “Yes, sir,” Daniel said. “But it wasn’t a warning. We think . . . that is, I think . . . that it was O’Malley, most likely, but it could have been Coyne, killed those two men. I think they wanted to make everyone think I did it.” He had dismissed the idea that Nácutsi had shot Browne. A Comanche wouldn’t have used arrows with hawk feathers, would not have slashed the thighs. No, that had been the work of a taibo. Or taibos.

  “Daniel wouldn’t stop nosing around,” Harvey Noble said. “They wanted him dead, one way or the other. But they didn’t want to make a martyr out of him, have a bunch of lawdogs like me hunting down his killer. They wanted to make it look like he was a dirty, murdering savage.”

  “They slashed those men’s thighs,” Daniel said. “That’s Lakota sign.”

  Gunter added: “O’Malley and Coyne picked that up in Dakota, too. Damned fools figured it was the sign for any Indian.”

  “But this Blake Browne,” Judge Parker said, “he said he had worked for these men.”

  “That’s right,” Daniel said. “He said he’d never work for Dakota again, though. They must have had some disagreement. Over their split. Or something.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time whiskey runners started fighting amongst themselves,” Gunter added.

  “When I caught him that first time, he thought I was working for this Dakota,” Daniel said.

  “Your Honor,” Noble said, “Browne figured he was being cheated by Coyne and O’Malley, and Coyne and O’Malley figured they didn’t need Browne any more. That’s another reason they killed Browne.”

  “And tried to make Daniel hang for it,” Gunter added. “Same with Benson. He was running whiskey for them. They killed him, planted the tablet under his body, just to get Daniel strung up.”

  Bates took a deep breath. “We still have little proof.”

  “And we ain’t likely to get much from a bunch of dead folks,” Noble said. “But there’s a little more. Browne operated out of Teepee City. Coyne told Daniel he had been up that way, had found nothing, but that didn’t strike me as factual, because I’ve arrested six or seven runners in that disputed chunk of land they call Greer County who come out of Teepee City. I knew that Teepee City was Blake Browne’s stronghold. So I rode that way. Not exactly my territory, but, well . . .”

  “And found those ginger beer bottles,” Bates said.

  “That’s right. Only they were full of forty-rod, not Dallas brew. I destroyed the whiskey, and helped jog the memories of a few of Teepee City’s finest.”

  Bates’s smile was wicked. “I can imagine how you did that, Marshal.”

  Harvey Noble had a fairly wicked grin himself. “Well, they recollected Vaughan Coyne and Fenn O’Malley real good after I buffaloed three of ’em. Daniel’s right. Best I figure things, from what I learned in Teepee City, is that Coyne and O’Malley supplied the bottles, which Browne filled with his rotgut. Browne had the still, see. Then Coyne and O’Malley decided, once they found out where the still was, they didn’t need Browne no more.”

  “I can’t believe a lawyer as smart as I have been led to believe this Vaughan Coyne was could ever think he could get away with all this,” Judge Parker said.

  Gunter snorted. “Criminals ain’t never smart. Just uppity.”

  “Very true,” Parker said sadly. “Very true.”

  “Coyne’s law practice wasn’t making much money,” Daniel said. “Whiskey running can be profitable.”

  “And what became of the Texas Ranger?” Parker said.

  Noble’s gaze fell on his dirty boots. Daniel stared at the lawman. Quantrell was one part of the puzzle he couldn’t quite fit, but he had started a new theory back on that road in the Wichita Mountains.

  “Well, reckon I’m partly to blame for all that,”
Noble began. “Reckon I should have confided in Daniel, told him about our operation.” He stroked his mustache before facing Daniel. “It’s what we called a joint operation, Daniel. Carl Quantrell was acting on the sly, a spy if you will. It was our intention to make folks believe he was crooked as they come, that he was helping transport whiskey into the Nations.”

  Bates picked up the story. “Quantrell came to Browne, confided in him, earned that nefarious character’s trust. The last report Ranger Quantrell sent to Austin was that he was on his way from Dallas to Wichita Falls, then on to Teepee City.”

  Daniel sighed, and tested his own idea. “Coyne kept pointing to Quantrell, saying he was Dakota, saying he was trying to kill me.”

  “Blake Browne trusted Carl,” Noble said. “Coyne, however, suspicioned him.”

  “Typical for a miserable, damned dtyhh.” Gunter spit into the nearest cuspidor.

  “When I was beaten up in Dallas,” Daniel said, “Quantrell stopped those thugs from hurting me worse than they did. He found Coyne’s note on me. I remember him cursing Coyne.”

  “That’s likely when Carl realized Coyne’s part in all this,” Noble said. “Miss Mullen come along, and Carl took off, still pretending to be a real bad hombre. Went off after Vaughan Coyne.”

  “Has there been any word from him?” Parker asked.

  Noble’s head shook. “Best guess, Your Honor, is Carl’s dead. Reckon he confronted Coyne, and Coyne, or O’Malley, killed him. That’s about the time O’Malley deserted.”

  “Dead?” Bates shook his head.

  “If I was a betting man, I’d say they took his body out toward Teepee City, buried or dumped him somewhere. There’s a lot of country out yonder to hide a dead Texas Ranger. Maybe they killed him there. We might not never know. They likely flew into a panic once they’d done Carl in. Killing a Ranger in Texas’ll put the fear of God in even the coolest criminal. My guess is that they hid the body, then realized they should start some rumor that Daniel was to blame.”