Whiskey Kills
Page 20
“A terrible shame,” Parker said, “if it’s true. A terrible loss, to us, and to all of Texas.”
“Yes, sir,” Noble said. “Carl was a fine man. You would have liked him, Daniel. Liked him when he wasn’t pretending to be the biggest enemy you ever had.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say.
“Why murder Ellenbogen and Caldwell?” Bates asked. “Why the ambuscade?”
“Everything was coming apart on them,” Noble said. “Likely they decided they had to kill Daniel once and for all. The agent and that Caldwell fellow just showed up at the wrong time.”
Gunter added: “They would have killed that newspaper woman, too. That’s how rotten those men were.”
A Regulator clock chimed. Daniel wet his lips. His leg ached.
Parker spoke again. “And the dead Comanche? The one who took the life of his daughter?”
Sighing, Daniel said: “Suicide. I wanted to believe that Coyne killed him, too, but, from what evidence we have, we believe he took his own life.”
“I would have done the same,” Gunter said. “But wouldn’t have taken so long to do it.”
“What about the other Comanche?” Parker asked.
“The one they call Gunpowder?” Noble said. “He ain’t the first Comanche to help white men sell whiskey to Indians.”
The judge’s head shook. “No, not that one. I mean the old man in that place near the Red River. The one with the dead kitten, that died that awful death.”
“Seven Beavers,” Daniel said.
“Was he poisoned?” Bates asked.
“Bad batch of whiskey,” Gunter said. “Just bad luck for that old chief. Ain’t that right, Daniel?”
Daniel lied one last time.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It is the way of The People, Daniel explained to the new agent, Joshua Biggers. When a Comanche becomes too old, too much of a burden, he is thrown away.
Biggers’s head shook without comprehension. “A life of violence, a life of darkness without Christian compassion, thus ends with neglect,” the agent said in a soft Southern drawl.
“I guess you could say that,” Daniel said.
The agent sighed. “I do not understand this at all, Daniel,” Biggers said. “It will take prayer. It will take time.”
Daniel smiled. Biggers was a young man, a Baptist preacher from North Carolina, the third agent in less than two years to try to understand the Comanches, Kiowas, and Apaches on the reservation. The Department of the Interior had tried a Texan hard rock and an Israelite. Now it was Biggers’s chance. Daniel offered his hand, and thought of Leviticus Ellenbogen with a great deal of sadness, thought that maybe the previous agent would have been able to help, been able to understand, if Daniel hadn’t been so blind and angry, so distrustful of any white man. “I will help,” Daniel said, “if I can.” He jutted his jaw at the door. “I will speak to Coyote Chaser. I will see to him, Reverend.”
“Thank you, kindly,” Biggers said as he shook Daniel’s hand, and slowly, Bible in hand, he turned, and walked away.
After taking a deep breath, Daniel limped into an agency cabin that smelled of death. He leaned his hickory cane against the wall, slowly grabbed an oaken barrel, and dragged it over to the cot. He pulled back the damp sheet, and took the frail hand of the dying Yamparika.
The marsh hawk’s words rang again in his mind: Remember Maman-ti.
In the language of The People, he whispered: “Hear me, Coyote Chaser. I know your heart. I know that your wife, your family have cast you out. I know you asked them to do this. I know you asked them because of your heart. Because of your shame.” He looked at the closed, still eyes, hoping for a response.
“I know,” Daniel said, “that you killed the Penateka from Huupi . . .” Careful not to say Seven Beavers’s name. “I know you poisoned him. Like the dohate once cast a curse and claimed the life of the great peace chief of our Kiowa friends, you killed the old Penateka. I do not know why.”
He stopped, gathering his memories. It had been his first thought, after the death of Seven Beavers. He had ridden south to prove Coyote Chaser had killed Seven Beavers, had murdered him, poisoned him. Later, he started to blame white whiskey runners, but he had been right the first time. He wished he hadn’t.
“Maybe you were angry with him as you often were, and your anger led to this wicked deed. Perhaps it was because he was old, and you knew he would be thrown away, too, and you did not wish that upon him, even a man you fought with often. But you killed him, and by killing him, as a great leader of The People, you knew that you must forfeit your own life. This is why you are here, traveling to The Land Beyond The Sun.”
The breath was ragged. Still no response.
“I do not understand all,” Daniel said. “I am not the bright detective they say I am.” He thought of Patty Mullen, wondered if she had reached Omaha yet, having closed The National Temperance Leader in Dallas, having said good bye to Daniel at the Fort Smith depot. The newspaper folded because of a lack of advertising, she had told him, but he wasn’t sure that was the real reason. The real reason might have been seeing the Wichita Mountains stained with blood. Or lying about Fenn O’Malley’s death to a federal judge and prosecutor. “I am not the brave warrior The People say I am.” He thought of Fenn O’Malley, thought of the warrior’s feast Ben Buffalo Bone had thrown last night for Daniel. The People sang of the bravery of the Metal Shirt called Killstraight who had wiped out the whiskey runners. Whiskey kills, both Pale Eyes and Comanche called these deaths. Brave deeds by a brave man. But Daniel knew the truth. He tried to picture Leviticus Ellenbogen’s body in a fancy casket in the New York capital.
“I am nothing.”
Son of a Kwahadi warrior and a Mescalero Apache woman, Daniel thought, a boy shipped away from his home to travel the white man’s road. A sergeant in the tribal police who earned $8 a month. A Comanche in a world that kept changing, most recently with this Dawes Act that Congress had passed. He didn’t know what that would bring to The People.
Sighing again, he patted the old man’s hand, held it gently. “I don’t know why The People do some things. I do not know why we throw our old away. But hear me, Coyote Chaser. You will not be abandoned. You will not begin your journey to The Land Beyond The Sun alone. I will wait with you.”
The breath stopped, resumed, hoarse, rattling with death, but there was a flicker beyond those eyelids, and slowly Coyote Chaser’s hand squeezed Daniel’s, then relaxed.
“I am here,” Daniel whispered. “For me, as much as for you.”
He heard something, looked up, found Rain Shower standing in the doorway. Tears filled his eyes. He tried to find the words, but could not.
“I will wait with you,” Rain Shower said, and she walked toward Daniel.
THE END
About the Author
Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives—all in the name of finding a good story. He’s also one of the few Western writers to have won three Spur Awards from Western Writers of America (for his novels, Camp Ford, in 2006, and Doubtful Cañon, in 2008, and his short story, “A Piano at Dead Man’s Crossing,” in 2002) and the Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (for his novel, Spark on the Prairie: The Trial of the Kiowa Chiefs, in 2004). A native of South Carolina, Boggs spent almost fifteen years in Texas as a journalist at the Dallas Times Herald and Fort Worth Star-Telegram before moving to New Mexico in 1998 to concentrate full time on his novels. Author of dozens of published short stories, he has also written for more than fifty newspapers and magazines, and is a frequent contributor to Boys’ Life, New Mexico Magazine, Persimmon Hill, and True West. His Western novels cover a wide range. The Lonesome Chisholm Trail (Five Star Westerns, 2000) is an authentic cattle-drive story, while Lonely Trumpet (Five Star Westerns, 2002) is an historical novel about the first
black graduate of West Point. The Despoilers (Five Star Westerns, 2002) and Ghost Legion (Five Star Westerns, 2005) are set in the Carolina backcountry during the Revolutionary War. The Big Fifty (Five Star Westerns, 2003) chronicles the slaughter of buffalo on the southern plains in the 1870s, while East of the Border (Five Star Westerns, 2004) is a comedy about the theatrical offerings of Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Texas Jack Omohundro, and Camp Ford (Five Star Westerns, 2005) tells about a Civil War baseball game between Union prisoners of war and Confederate guards. “Boggs’s narrative voice captures the old-fashioned style of the past,” Publishers Weekly said, and Booklist called him “among the best Western writers at work today.” Boggs lives with his wife Lisa and son Jack in Santa Fe. His website is http://www.johnnydboggs.com.