White Lightning

by Lyle Brandt

  And it had worked…up to a point. But Slade’s work had endangered Faith again, when some fanatics with religious murder on their minds had trailed him back to Faith’s ranch, outside Enid. Slade was shepherding a family marked for slaughter, and the showdown had imperiled Faith again—forced her to fight beside him for her life, in fact. To kill in the defense of strangers and her property.

  More strain and ugly memories.

  The last time hadn’t actually been Slade’s fault, as it turned out. Faith had dismissed one of her ranch hands when the others caught him stealing and peering at Faith through her windows at night. The slug had nursed a grudge, teamed up with brutal border trash somewhere along the way, and sold the gang on the idea of looting Faith’s ranch. Faith and Slade were at the altar, on their wedding day, when the banditos struck. And when the smoke cleared, both of them had been unconscious, gravely wounded.

  Rotten luck or Fate?

  Slade had bounced back from the shooting faster than his lady love. She’d still been comatose when Slade began the vengeance ride that carried him from Enid, south through Texas, into Mexico, and more than halfway to the gates of Hell. On his return, leading the scum who’d set it all in motion to a trial before Judge Dennison and hanging in the courtyard, he’d found Faith awake—and finally determined that she’d seen enough of him and the violence that had marred their life together.

  She was selling up and heading out. They hadn’t spoken since the day she’d told Slade her decision, though he ached to plead with her, beg for another chance. The thing that held him back was knowing that the ugly memories would always stand between them, coupled with the fear of some fresh trouble waiting down the road.

  Now, as he prepared for another manhunt, Slade found himself wondering if Faith would still be there when he returned. If he returned. Would she take off without a parting word? And would it matter either way?

  Slade had half an hour left to kill when he was finished packing, so he walked the long block west to Mattson’s funeral parlor. It felt morbid, but he wanted to examine Tanner’s body, see what had been done to him and what they might be up against. Whether a viewing could determine who had murdered Bill, red men or white, Slade wasn’t sure. If nothing else, he thought that it would put him in the proper mood for hunting.

  Holland Mattson was a tall, thin man with a shock of gray hair that pomade could barely tame. His long face and chin curtain beard brought Abe Lincoln to mind, the impression enhanced when Mattson opened his mouth to speak in a sonorous baritone voice.

  He met Slade in the front room of the home, a euphemism Slade had never understood, since no one living occupied the place. Mattson, his pallid wife, and robust adolescent son lived two blocks over, near the heart of town, away from Holland’s work and its attendant smells. Still, home it was, according to the sign out front, and Slade was disinclined to raise the issue with the man in charge.

  “Marshal, you’ve come to see your colleague, I presume?” the undertaker said.

  “That is correct.” Something about the man caused Slade to speak more formally than usual.

  “You are aware that he was…badly used?”

  “I heard.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to work with him, you understand, since he arrived last night. It’s bound to be closed casket, I’m afraid.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  Mattson led him through one door, into a room with caskets on display, then through another to the undertaker’s workshop. There were two reclining customers on tables separated by a yard or so, both draped in sheets. The one on Slade’s right as he entered seemed to be a woman, from the shape.

  “Mrs. Wolinsky. Did you know her, Marshal?”

  “No.”

  “The grocer’s wife. Just thirty-one. Ironically, she choked on a Brussels sprout. And here…your fellow deputy.”

  Slade stood between the tables, facing Mattson on the other side of Tanner’s shrouded form. “All right,” he said.

  Mattson peeled back the sheet, from Tanner’s head down to his feet. As advertised, the corpse was nude and mutilated. Tanner had been scalped, his nose and lips removed. The carving on his chest and stomach might have had some pattern to it, once upon a time, but scavengers had done their part to make a mess of any symbols etched there. Moving on, the deputy had been emasculated and his feet were gone.

  “How much of this was done by men?” asked Slade.

  “Men or a man,” Mattson replied. “The scalping, obviously. There’s clean knife work all the way around the cranium, you see. The feet, of course. If they’d been chewed off—by coyotes, say—you wouldn’t see that neat transection of the ankle joint.”

  “Neat?”

  “As opposed to being gnawed and broken off. As to the rest, the wounds you see were first incised by hand, then drew the normal prairie scavengers.”

  “You wouldn’t know if he was dead before they started carving him, by any chance?”

  Frowning, the undertaker said, “You won’t appreciate it if I try to spare your feelings, I assume.”

  “Just give it to me straight.”

  “Retraction of the muscles on a deep cut indicate the victim was alive, as here,” said Mattson, pointing toward one side of Tanner’s ravaged chest. “In death, we see no elasticity.”

  “So this was torture, not just murder,” Slade replied.

  “I fear that your assessment is correct, Marshal.”

  “And nothing here to tell me whether it was done by Indians or white men?”

  “Um. Perhaps the feet,” said Mattson. “I confess my knowledge of the savages is incomplete, but I recall hearing from someone that they take the feet of victims slain in war, sometimes, to hobble their opponents in the afterlife. A crude preventative against postmortem haunting, as it were.”

  “Do you remember where you heard that?”

  “Not offhand. I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind,” Slade said. “It’s something, anyway.”

  “If you desire a bit more time with the departed…”

  “No. That’s plenty. Thank you.”

  Mattson drew the sheet back over Tanner, gently, almost reverently. It may have been an act for his sole benefit, but Slade appreciated it, regardless. He’d seen stiffs dumped into holes without a fare-thee-well, or left topside to feed the buzzards, and had ridden off from some himself.

  “Has someone told his family?”

  “No one has been in touch, as yet.”

  “He’s covered, though? I mean, the funeral?”

  “All settled, by the court,” Mattson replied.

  Suppose that it would be the same for me, Slade thought, then put it out of mind. He didn’t like to dwell on death before a hunt, unless it was the other guy’s.

  “Okay, thanks for your time,” he said and put the place behind him. Halfway back to his hotel, to fetch his gear, Slade still imagined that the smell of lifeless flesh and Mattson’s damned embalming chemicals trailed him.

  Someone would have to pay for what he’d seen. Pay with their lives, whether they went to trial or chose to fight it out. Now that he’d seen what they had done, Slade felt that he was equal to the job.

  3

  The livery and blacksmith’s shop stood six blocks north of Slade’s hotel. He got there with his gear as Luke Naylor was saddling his snowflake Appaloosa gelding. The younger marshal grinned at him and said, “I thought you might’ve gone back for a second breakfast.”

  Slade replied, “I went to Mattson’s. Killed my appetite.”

  That wiped the smile off Naylor’s face. “You went to see him?”

  “Thought it best. I find it helps me focus, knowing just how far the other side will go.”

  Naylor glanced toward the hostler, working some distance away, and lowered his voice as he asked, “So, what did you think? Was it renegades?”

  Slade knew he meant renegade tribesmen, but still hadn’t made up his mind. “Some kind of vicious bastards,” he replied. �
��I couldn’t tell you whether they were Indians.”

  Naylor frowned. “What did they…do to him?”

  Slade saw no reason not to share. If anything, it might keep Naylor sharp while they were on the hunt. He said, “Whoever jumped Bill took his hair, which could be Indians, or not. Cut up his face and body. Kept his feet.”

  “His feet? What kinda deal is that, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” Slade replied. He didn’t feel like passing on the undertaker’s speculation about native laming rituals, when he had nothing to support it. Naylor seemed to be half set on blaming Indians for Tanner’s murder, as it was, and there was nothing to be gained by aggravating his suspicion.

  Slade moved to the stall that held his roan mare, took her bit-less bridle from the wall, fitting the padded noseband and the crownpiece quickly into place. Ten minutes later she was saddled, and he’d stowed his long guns in their scabbards—a Winchester Model ’73 on his right, chambered for the same .44-40 cartridge as his Colt Peacemaker, and a matching Model 1887 lever-action shotgun to his left, loaded with twelve-gauge buckshot rounds.

  “You always take two shoulder guns?” asked Naylor, watching him.

  “You wear two pistols,” Slade observed.

  “Figure I might get into something where there’s no time to reload. I never want it said I died because I ran a bullet short.”

  Slade smiled at that. “With me,” he said, “it’s different tools for different jobs. Up close, far off. You never know.”

  “That’s true enough. You ready?”

  Slade swung up into his saddle. “As I’ll ever be,” he said.

  They left the stable, turning north on Main Street, Slade on the outside and Naylor closer to the sidewalk. Passers-by ignored them for the most part, as most people seemed to do with lawmen if they weren’t in need of help. Slade’s acquaintances would speak to him, of course, if he was walking down the street, but when they saw him riding out of town it changed somehow. As if they guessed where he was going, what he’d have to do on their behalf, and didn’t want to soil themselves with that side of society.

  Slade took the opportunity to study people as he rode, knowing most wouldn’t meet his eyes. Passing Doc Abernathy’s office on his left, he saw the front door open, a woman emerging, the doctor behind her. They paused there a moment, the woman saying something, Abernathy nodding, answering.

  Slade felt his heart skip as he recognized Faith Connover. She turned in time to see him passing by, looked startled in her own right, quickly averting her eyes. Slade brought the fingers of his left hand to his hat brim nonetheless, then drew his gaze away from Faith, continuing along his way. He felt Naylor looking at him, but the younger man was wise enough to hold his tongue.

  They rode in silence until they were clear of town, broken when Naylor asked, “This BIA man that we’re off to see now, what’s your take on him?” referring to Frank Berringer, the local reservation agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

  “I wouldn’t want to prejudice you,” Slade replied.

  “Afraid I might not take a liking to him?”

  “Doesn’t matter to our business, either way,” Slade said. “I’ve only met him once, but he impressed me as the sort who likes to lord it over those less fortunate. A man who likes his privilege and power. If the choice was mine, I likely wouldn’t trust him with authority. Of course, the bureau didn’t ask for my opinion.”

  “No, they wouldn’t. So, you think he’s down on redskins?”

  “I think he divides the world, inside his head. There’s people who control him and can make him miserable if they choose to. Others, he can push around without much consequence.”

  “In other words, a bully.”

  “But refined about it, if you follow me,” Slade said. “You wouldn’t find him in a lynch mob. Doesn’t like to soil his hands. He gives the orders, leaves the dirty work to his tribal police.”

  “Or the army,” said Naylor.

  “Or them. I still can’t figure why he’s calling them to hunt for Tanner’s killer when they didn’t even find Bill’s body on the rez.”

  “Maybe he’s scared the problem will get out of hand.”

  “Assuming that he even has a problem,” Slade replied.

  “You heard the judge. Somebody’s getting whiskey to the Cherokees,” said Naylor. “It must look bad for Berringer, you think about it.”

  Slade was thinking. He replied, “So, what he needs to do is put a lid on drinking where he has authority to stop it. Hunting ’shiners off the rez is our job, not the cavalry’s.”

  “Judge sounded riled about it, too,” Naylor remarked.

  “He should be,” Slade replied. “Unless the president proclaims a state of martial law, Judge Dennison’s in charge of law enforcement for the territory. It gets hazy on the reservation, when the army sticks its nose in, but he does his best to hold the line. You know the Posse Comitatus Act?”

  “It rings a bell,” said Naylor. “Couldn’t quote it for you.”

  “I never heard of it until I started marshaling,” Slade told him. “Congress passed it fifteen years ago. It limits local government from calling on the army to enforce their laws without an order from the president or act of Congress.”

  “But the bluecoats still chase Indians,” Naylor reminded him.

  “Because the Indians aren’t U.S. citizens,” Slade said, “and Washington considers any crimes committed off the rez an act of war against the government. Moonshiners, now, they aren’t rebelling against anything except the tax on booze.”

  “So, if a pack of Cherokees killed Tanner…”

  “It could be an army problem,” Slade allowed. “Unless we find them first.”

  “But if it’s white men—”

  “Then the army has no interest in the case,” Slade finished for him. “They’re all ours.”

  “I hope we find ’em, either way,” said Naylor. “Bill seemed like a decent guy, the few times I had dealings with him.”

  “Decent sums it up,” Slade said. “And nobody deserves to go the way he did.”

  “Nobody?”

  “Well…”

  “I thought so.” Naylor chuckled. “I can likely think of one or two, I put my mind to it.”

  “Don’t think too hard,” Slade said. “I wouldn’t want to wind up hunting you.”

  They rode another mile or so before Naylor spoke up again. “You ever work a moonshine case before?” he asked.

  “Nope. It’s a first for me,” Slade said.

  “I had one, back around the Christmas season,” Naylor said. “A family was cookin’ up by Alva, on the Salt Fork of the Arkansas. Came from Kentucky, as it happened, where the business went back through their generations. Mostly sold their product up in Kansas, though. They lived around too many Injuns—Osage, I believe they were—to want ’em liquored up.”

  “How many of the family were in on it?” Slade asked.

  “Old grandpa called the shots,” Naylor replied. “There was his son, and he had three boys old enough to work the stills.”

  “You took them by yourself?”

  “They didn’t want to go, I grant you,” Naylor said. “I had to wing a couple of ’em, then they saw that I meant business and they came along.”

  “Lucky for you,” Slade said.

  “I guess. The lads were all for roastin’ me until they saw their daddy and the old man bleeding. Then, of course, I let their females off the hook. I figure they were just as guilty as the menfolk, but it just seemed petty, charging them.”

  “You have to watch your back with women, sometimes,” Slade suggested, thinking of Kate Bender and the hatchet she’d have split his skull with, given half a chance. After he’d spoken, though, Slade wondered whether Naylor thought it was a reference to Faith, then decided he should let it drop without explaining.

  “Do you know much about whiskey?” Naylor asked him.

  “Just the kinds I like.”

  “I
mean the making of it.”

  “Never gave that part much thought,” Slade said.

  “I hadn’t either, till the job at Alva,” Naylor said. “It’s kind of interesting, though. Let’s say they start with corn. You need at least four bushels, dried and ground to meal. Soak that in eight to ten gallons of water, then toss in a couple pounds of malt, two sticks of yeast, two gallons of hops, and a half bushel of barley. Mix it up and you’ve got mash, which needs to sit fermenting for five or six days.”

  “And then what?” Slade inquired, relieved to have the subject changed.

  “You put it in a big old copper kettle,” Naylor said, “and heat it up. The steam comes off through a condensing coil and drips into tub. The first batch comes out clear, around 110 proof, and they call that the high shots. Later on, it turns gray and they switch out the tubs for what they call the low wines, maybe half as strong.”

  “I’ve never seen gray whiskey,” Slade remarked.

  “See, that’s the thing. Before you sell the booze, you have to proof it down. They pour some of the high shots in a bottle, then start adding low wine until beads form in the middle of the mix. If they sink to the bottom, your liquor’s too weak. If they rise to the top, it’s too strong. Then you test it.”

  “By drinking, I guess?”

  “Not so fast,” Naylor said. “First you pour a smidgen in a bowl and light it with a match. If you get blue flame, then it’s safe to drink. Turn up a yellow flame, forget it. That’s wood alcohol and it’ll blind you, maybe kill you.”

  “That’s a lot to know,” Slade said.

  “And it goes on from there. They keep the mash, then sweeten it with fifty pounds of sugar for the second batch. Third round, a hundred pounds, fourth time, hundred and fifty. After that, you start again with new mash. Age the liquor in a keg, if you’ve a mind to, or just sell it raw, soon as you get it in a jug.”

  “What proof is that?” asked Slade.

  “Eighty’s about the average,” Naylor replied.

  Meaning forty percent alcohol by volume. Enough to get a Cherokee—or anybody else—stoked up for fighting, if they didn’t pass out first. Slade knew that federal laws banning sale of liquor dated from the turn of the century, buttressed by a statute passed in 1832, forbidding sale of alcohol on reservations. He understood the primal fear of raiding parties fueled by “firewater,” but wasn’t sure if red men acted any worse than whites when they were drinking heavily. As for blaming murder on a whiskey jug, he’d seen both men and women flare into a rage when they were drunk, but Slade had always thought the liquor simply brought out traits they covered up, to some extent, in daily life.