Marshal and the Moonshiner

by C. M. Wendelboe

  I shrugged. “I suppose folks don’t have any trouble with an immigrant enforcing their laws. As long as he enforces them for everyone.”

  Vibrations in the floor, followed by a loud knock interrupted our philosophical discussion. “Come in,” Stauffer boomed.

  The first thing I saw was a man who filled the doorway and who had to stoop to clear it. He was as broad as Stauffer, but about a half-foot taller even than me. His swarthy complexion made me think he was an Indian at first, then figured otherwise as his twelve o’clock shadow was coming on about four hours early. Italian? Perhaps Greek? I almost didn’t see the woman behind him making her way around the man.

  “Leave us, Johnny.”

  Johnny turned and shuffled from the office, those same floor vibrations fading, and I turned my attention to the woman: Byron’s niece. She had morphed from the sloppy, staggering drunk to a hot patootie wearing a double-breasted, blue shirt sporting mother-of-pearl buttons. The top two buttons remained unbuttoned, revealing the slight hint of cleavage. She had applied a liberal amount of Ingram’s rouge—probably to hide the hickey on her cheek I saw last night. A badge was pinned over her left breast, and a revolver rode high on her hip in a Tom Threeperson’s rig.

  “You met last night,” Stauffer said, “so introductions aren’t necessary.”

  Once again, I fought the urge to tell Stauffer Maris didn’t meet me when I caught her stare. Her eyes seemed to plead for me to remain quiet, eyes that now wore just the right amount of makeup to be alluring; Maris’s almond-shaped brown eyes pled while, at the same time, being inviting. For that reason alone I hesitated. Stauffer was the other reason. Perhaps I just didn’t trust a Kraut who had fought me in the Great War.

  “Set your ass down, Red Hat.”

  She took one of two overstuffed chairs in front of Stauffer’s desk. She eased into the chair, her cleaned and pressed jeans tighter than they should have been, and her cologne wafted past me, courtesy of the slow-rotating ceiling fan. I could see why Stauffer wanted to bed her.

  “So you two got acquainted last night?” Stauffer probed.

  Again her pleading eyes. Although I had her by twenty years, those eyes helped me to lie. “We met last night,” I said, not giving Stauffer anything to use in whatever sick fantasy he might have of her.

  “Good. Then you won’t mind finding this Amos character so I can have Red Hat back. We got important things for her to do around here.”

  Then it finally sank in. “You’re assigning me a woman?”

  Stauffer grinned.

  “But I need a lawman to help me. Amos Iron Horse is a gnarly—”

  “I am a lawman.” Maris leaned over her seat, and I thought she was going to hit me. “Or law woman. There’s three of us women officers in Oklahoma right now.” Her face became red and irritated.

  “That might be.” I stood and leaned over Stauffer’s desk. “But I need a man. I need someone who can watch my back—”

  “Red Hat’s the only deputy I can spare.” Stauffer blew smoke rings my way, and I backed away from the desk. His smile showed he missed teeth on one side of his mouth, and I was becoming angry enough that I could even out the other side. “She’s the only one that’s not doing anything of importance.” He winked at her. “But then, Red Hat never does.”

  “Thanks a hell of a lot,” Maris blurted. “And now I got to baby-sit some old guy from Montana.”

  “Wyoming,” I corrected.

  She waved the air. “Same thing. Some rube that I got to hold his hand—”

  Stauffer stood abruptly. “Watch your mouth. You’re half a step away from—”

  “Getting fired?” Maris laughed. “Then do it. Toby.”

  “I told you I don’t like ‘Toby.’ ” Stauffer’s pallid skin flushed bright red all the way to his neck, and he clenched his fists. Another time, another circumstance, and he might have hit Maris. “Just shut the door after you. And take Marshal Lane with you.”

  Stauffer turned his back to us and looked out the window down at the back lot. Maris smiled at me and motioned to the door. She left the sheriff’s office behind me but didn’t shut the door after her.

  CHAPTER 5

  * * *

  Maris had to run to keep up with me as I hoofed it to the Kerfoot. “You need me if you want to find Amos Iron Horse,” she called after me.

  I stopped and faced her. She just wouldn’t listen to me. “I’ll find him on my own.”

  “You’re just mad ’cause Stauffer assigned a woman to help you, aren’t you?”

  “You being a woman’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “Of course it does.” She shook out a Chesterfield and turned her back to the wind to light it. “You’re embarrassed ’cause Stauffer assigned me to you. Like you’re not important enough to deserve one of his other deputies.”

  I covered my mouth before more grit blew in. “I got to find Amos quick. Before he goes to ground somewhere. I got no time to wet-nurse a woman.”

  She flicked her match onto the dust-covered sidewalk. She stepped close to me and stood chin to chest. “Look, I’m on thin ice with Stauffer right now as it is.”

  “Don’t tell me—because you only occasionally show up to work sober?”

  She dropped her head. “Last night was an exception.”

  “Bull. You staggered into Leonard Brothers last night nine sheets to the wind and enjoying it. I need someone who’s clearheaded enough to actually help. Believe me, I know how worthless a drunk can be.”

  I stepped around her and continued to the hotel when she said, almost in a whimper, “I need this job, Marshal Lane.”

  “Get another,” I said over my shoulder.

  “I know Amos,” she called after me.

  I stopped and faced her. Her shoulders slumped, and she seemed oblivious to the wind dusting her clothes. “I know Amos Iron Horse,” she whispered again.

  “Biblically?”

  “Once. We went to Cholocco together.”

  “Cholocco?”

  “Boarding school north of Ponco City. We were kids then.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She kicked a clod of dirt with the toe of her boot. “I wanted to make this case on my own. Not because I screwed Amos one night in the commons at Cholocco.”

  Those almond eyes looked through me again, begging. In a few years my own daughter would be a young woman trying to make her way in the world. Maris was, I had to admit, finding her own way. She’d won the first round. “All right.” I caved. “But you got to do what I tell you. When I tell you. This might get dangerous if we find Amos, and I won’t be able to watch you every minute. He murdered a rancher as easily as you’d step on a bug. And his wife said Amos had no remorse.”

  Maris straightened up like she had a second lease on her job. If she screwed this up, I wouldn’t care if her lease ran out with Stauffer. “Amos’s got a nasty reputation,” she began. “He ran away from the boarding school when he was sixteen, and every time some gas station was knocked off, or someone was found knifed in a back alley, the description given was mighty close to his. I know what we’re up against, Marshal Lane.”

  “Nelson. Or Nels. Makes it a little less awkward.”

  Maris smiled. “Fair enough. And I’m Maris to most folks.”

  “Not Crazy Woman, like your Uncle Byron said?”

  “Not while I’m looking for Amos.”

  “Okay, then. Bring your car around in front of the hotel.”

  She ran for her car, while I walked the rest of the block to the Kerfoot. I bypassed the elevator and took the steps three at a time. Not bad for a man of forty years and some change. I stepped into my fancy room the government was paying for, a room where I was so out of my element. I was more used to sleeping in the open country than being in such a place.

  I paused in the middle of the room and looked about. Something was out of place, yet I saw everything as I’d left it. Still, the thought that someone had been in my room—perhaps sear
ched it—lingered, and I opened the top drawer of the chest of drawers. My .45 still rested in the holster where I’d placed it this morning. The box of ammunition I’d left on top of the dresser was also still there. But when I stooped down to check the other drawers, the light glancing off the dust imprint that had settled on top of the box of ammunition showed it had been moved ever so slightly. So someone had been in my room and picked up the box and put it back. But I didn’t have time to think about that now.

  I slid my belt through the holster loop and checked the .45. I jacked a round into the chamber and replaced the round from the magazine before snapping it back into the Colt. Eight fat rounds, I thought, as I positioned the holster where I could reach the auto. Enough for eight elephants, if I should run into that many here in the wilds of Oklahoma. Or eight far more dangerous game. Like the one who had come into my room. Or the one I hunted.

  On the way out the door I stopped at the front desk.

  “No messages, Marshal,” the desk clerk told me. His name tag said Ragwood, and I wondered if that was his first or last name. I had hoped Yancy would have sent more information about Amos and Cat after they’d moved to Wind River two years ago. I was certain Yancy was doing his romantic best to re-interview Cat as many times as he could. And that bothered me. That and someone going into my locked room. “Anyone ask for me while I was gone?”

  “No, Marshal.”

  “No one wanted a set of keys to my room?”

  “No, Marshal.” But the keys on the master board in back also had a dust print showing the keys had been recently replaced. Ragwood was a poor liar. He turned from me and acted as if he were looking a name up in the ledger book. And glanced at the switchboard. And tied his shoes. Everywhere except at me. “Thanks,” I said. “Just curious.”

  I went outside to the intense heat and always-present dust and rubbed my eyes. Maris was parked at the curb waiting—not in one of those fancy new Fords I’d seen in the sheriff’s parking lot. Instead, she sat coaxing an idle out of a beat-to-hell Chevy pickup that spewed more pollutants than all the dust clouds in Oklahoma. She would tap the foot feed, and blue smoke would puff from the rusted-through tail pipe. Rattling echoed from somewhere under the hood. The truck had no side glass, and one front fender was smashed flat. It nearly rubbed against the bald tires with patches on patches. I knew they weren’t long for this world.

  “Well, get in,” Maris yelled over the loud tappet noise coming from the worn-out engine. The sound bounced off the brick front of the Kerfoot. “It might not look like much, but it’ll get us where we want to go.”

  “Which is where?”

  “Wade and Choctaw Street. Cities Service Station.”

  “I agree you better get this . . . thing to a repair shop pronto.”

  “We’re not going there to have it fixed,” Maris said as she leaned over and unlatched the door handle, only because the outside one didn’t work. “When Amos lived in El Reno, he did some machine work for Mel Fleus. If Amos contacted anyone here since he’s been back, it’d be Mel.”

  I poured myself into the truck and hit my head on the door jamb. My hat fell, but I caught it before it touched the ground. I wiggled around to get comfortable, and my knees rubbed the dash no matter what position I was in. “Where’d you get this jewel?”

  “Saved up for it,” Maris said as she double-clutched to get the thing into gear. “Only a select few deputies drive county cars. And as you saw by the way Stauffer got on my case, I’m not one of those select few. Can’t complain though,” she said as the truck lurched ahead; “the county pays three cents a mile.”

  I could empathize with her. The federal government paid me twelve cents a mile, and I barely kept the Agony Wagon afloat on that. “Tell me about Cholocco and how you met Amos.”

  Maris pulled to the side of the street and fiddled with the spark advance while she talked. “Amos was a year ahead of me when we went to boarding school.” She stopped messing with the spark lever and looked out the window, as if memories were written in dust on the street. “He was my first.”

  “First?”

  Her eyelids fluttered. “He broke my cherry.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He was my first lover.” Maris looked at me and smirked. “It has been a long time for you, Nels.”

  “Longer than you can imagine.”

  “Anyway,” she said as the motor evened out and she jammed the mixer stick into first gear, “I was devastated when he left—we were there through our sixteenth year. He never even kissed me good-bye.” She triple-clutched into third, and I thought the truck would die right then and there. “I heard rumors for years after that how Amos was into illegal booze. But I got over him. Drowned my sorrows as they say.”

  “In booze.”

  “In men.”

  She chugged to a stop kitty-corner from the El Reno Police Station. Blue smoke announced to any officer looking that a jalopy had just arrived. I started to climb out of the truck when Maris laid her hand on my arm. “This is as far as you go, big guy. If Mel even gets a whiff that I’m looking for Amos officially, he’ll clam up. I’ll be back.”

  “When?”

  “As long as it takes. In the meantime, I’d wrap that bandana around your face. Looks like the wind’s picking up.”

  She took off her badge and holster and started across the street to Avant’s Cities Service when I stopped her. “Ask him about Whiskers.” I explained to Maris about the man I only knew as Whiskers, who was with Amos when Selly Antelope was killed.

  “He a suspect, too?”

  “He’s a witness.”

  After she ran to Cities Service, I grabbed my bandana from my pocket and took her advice. After fifteen minutes, I crawled out of the truck and stretched. I leaned against a fender, but abruptly backed away. The hundred-degree heat had warmed the metal enough that I thought the pickup would melt away. Which might have been another blessing.

  A milk wagon idled by, the sway-back mare that pulled the cart hanging its head in shame. Foam frosted her mouth, and she caught Nels’s stare for the briefest moment before he was lost to the blinders affixed to her headstall.

  I was into my second chaw of Mail Pouch when Maris trudged across the street from Cities Service. Her lipstick had smeared, and she’d buttoned one of her shirt buttons through the wrong hole. I didn’t ask her what the piece of information had cost her. “Amos stopped to visit with Mel two days ago.”

  “He need work?”

  Maris shook her head. She caught my stare and rebuttoned her shirt. “He wanted Mel to keep his eyes out for a good used car. Maybe one of those new Fords. Something with the biggest motor Mel could find. He doesn’t know anything more than that.”

  “You believe Mel?”

  “As much as the next guy.”

  “You ask him about Whiskers?”

  “He’s only heard rumors of some guy named Whiskers who blew into town the last few days about the time Amos showed up.”

  “So all we know for sure is Amos is back in El Reno.”

  “We know a great deal.” Maris tickled the choke, and the truck coughed to life. She looked sideways at me. “So you haven’t figured it out, hot shot Marshal?”

  “Indulge me.”

  She smiled with a set of pearlies reflecting the noon-day sun. “Amos didn’t ask Mel for a job, which tells me he’s already got one. Amos asked for a car with a powerful engine. That tells me he intends getting back into running moonshine again.”

  “He’s lived in Wyoming the last couple years. Would he still have contacts here? With that moonshine business, he’d need people he could trust.”

  Maris popped the clutch, and the truck died with a shudder. “Amos could work for his brother Vincent in Oklahoma City. Vincent’s been in the rum-running business for years, but he’s a cagy one, and the revenuers haven’t caught him yet.” She adjusted her shirt that had ridden over her belt. “Mel thought Amos would go to work for Vincent, too. He runs Iron Horse Services in
Oklahoma City. Oil field services is just a front for his booze business.”

  “Then we’d better hunt Vincent up in the morning.”

  Maris nodded to the sun shining through a dark dust haze. “There’s still daylight left. We could go now.”

  I was beat from the train ride and from riding in Maris’s death trap. The heat wore on me, and I was tired from spitting dust. All I wanted right now was a cot in my room and time to cut some Zs. “Let’s try it in the morning.”

  She took a pencil stub from her shirt pocket and tore off a piece of her Chesterfield pack. She handed me the note. “You change your mind—want to look up Vincent tonight—you give me a ring. I might or might not be at that number.”

  “Depending on if you get lucky tonight?”

  Maris smiled. “Luck’s got nothing to do with it.”

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  As much as I needed rest, I needed to find Amos more. I waited until Maris’s truck groaned around the corner before I went into the Kerfoot. Ragwood sat behind the counter. He grabbed the ledger, and appeared to study it when I approached. He still couldn’t look me in the eye. “You got a car?” I asked.

  He looked up from the book and nodded. “I picked up a used breezer, a ’28 Model A from Mel Fleus. He hears about a lot of them. If you need a car, I can call Mel—”

  “I just want to rent one for tonight,” I interrupted him. “Maybe tomorrow if I need it.”

  “There’s nobody that rents cars here.”

  “I’ll pay you to use your Model A.”

  Ragwood looked at me skeptically. “You want to rent my car?”

  “I do.”

  “Will the government be paying for it?”

  “Sort of,” I answered. “I’ll pay for it, and the government will reimburse me.”

  “You’re not . . . going to be running shine with it?”

  “I’m a lawman,” I said, my temper rising. If Ragwood thought a lawman might use his car to transport booze, he must have had experience with other officers here doing the same thing. “Of course I’m not.”