Marshal and the Moonshiner

by C. M. Wendelboe

She nodded. “Stocky, but short legged,” and she finally saw the dots I’d connected. “You think Amos drove the panel last night. But it’d have to be after Jimmy drove it. That tall drink of water would have shoved it back as far—” She smiled. “You’re thinking Amos was the shooter last night?”

  “Possible. Whoever it was, my guess is he capped Jimmy to keep him quiet after the shooting and drove the panel truck to the country and ditched it.”

  “And forgot to move the seat back.”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  Maris opened a new pack of Chesterfields. She slapped the top against her hand before digging in her shirt pocket for a match. “But how did Amos’s hair get snagged on that screw sticking out of the dash?”

  “He didn’t. That strand of hair I found was brown.” I recalled Amos’s hat knocked off at the rodeo in Ethete last summer. His full head of coal-black hair fell out of his hat. “Amos has coal-black hair.”

  “So Amos might have had an accomplice who deposited his hair there. Someone with brown hair.”

  “That wasn’t human hair.”

  Maris started to light her cigarette when she stopped abruptly. The match burned down to her fingers, and she shook it out. “Now I’m confused.”

  “That strand of hair I had to turn over to Stauffer was horse hair. Maybe mule. Has a distinct texture and feel different from human hair. I just didn’t want Stauffer to know it yet. Whoever was in that truck with Jimmy had business with horses recently.”

  “Lot of folks hereabouts still ride horses. Lord knows, it’s cheaper than gasoline at seventeen cents a gallon.”

  “I’m thinking someone working with horses regularly . . .”

  “Ft. Reno,” Maris blurted out, fishing another match from her pocket.

  “And if we draw the conclusion out logically, it means Jimmy Wells was knee-deep in illegal booze—and probably had a partner.”

  Maris nodded. “Or a go-between. Someone like Sergeant Dutch Seugard.”

  “I couldn’t have said it any better. I need to get into the fort tonight.”

  Maris grinned wickedly. “Leave it to me—I’m finally going to get in your pants tonight.”

  “This just looks silly.”

  “Relax.” Maris downshifted while giving me the final inspection. “It’s dark. No one will notice.”

  But I noticed how silly I looked with my legs jutting out of some private’s uniform. The trousers stopped above my ankles, and the fatigue tunic ended up several inches above my waistline. “They’ll spot a civilian for sure,” I said as I pulled the pants down as far as I could.

  “No, they won’t.”

  “I look like the oldest private in the army. Where the hell did you steal this, off some circus midget?”

  “An old boyfriend.” Maris laughed. “All right, a young boyfriend. He hurriedly left it at my place when another boyfriend—who outranked him—came knocking at my door.”

  “I don’t know about this . . .”

  “Just walk through the gate natural-like, and the guard will wave you on.”

  “Where’ll you be?”

  “Distracting the gate guard.”

  “Distracting or assaulting?”

  She shrugged. “Whichever he’ll allow me to do while he’s on duty.”

  Maris doused the headlights and let me out. I walked the last quarter mile toward Ft. Reno’s main gate, pulling my trousers up and my tunic down all the way. As I walked within sight of the guard shack, Maris drove past me and stopped at the kiosk. By the time I’d reached the gate, Maris had climbed out of her car, smoothed her flapper dress over subtle curves, and engaged the gate guard in meaningless conversation. He leaned against her car and gave me the briefest wave through while he returned his attention to the woman in the low-cut top. For the corporal’s sake, I prayed I’d be back soon to rescue him.

  The fort was quiet this time of night. Either the soldiers were busy taking money off each other in a card game, or they were in town raising hell with the locals. I passed the administration building, my boot steps loud on the wooden walkway. I stepped off and onto the gauntlet of horse and mule droppings on the parade ground. I just couldn’t convince myself that I looked like I belonged there. As if a six-foot-three soldier in a five-foot-eight soldier’s uniform belonged anywhere.

  A group of soldiers, laughing, one punching another in good fun, passed me. I made eye contact with none of them, and none gave me a look as I stopped at the NCO barracks. The soldier we’d seen with the Mason jar of moonshine had come out of the NCO quarters. I leaned against the side the building and waited until a first sergeant came out with a paper bag tucked under his arm. “Is Dutch still in there?”

  The sergeant, in his thirties, faced me with his hands on his hips and gave me the once over. “No wonder you’ve been busted. Your uniform looks terrible.” The corporal insignia faintly remained on the upper arms where the army ripped the stripes off after some disciplinary hearing. Maris never told me I’d be called on to explain that. “Just a misunderstanding, First Sergeant,” I said smartly. “Won’t happen again.”

  He cocked his head as he was trying to figure if I was sincere. “Better not,” he said after a time. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Dutch went to the commissary to run things tonight.”

  I watched him become just another fading shadow in the darkness inside the fort. I let out a deep breath to relax and headed for the commissary building across the parade grounds. I recalled my earlier discussion with Maris: “Uncle Byron hears rumors at the diner that there’s a sizeable still operating in the commissary. Soldiers claim that’s where all the moonshine for the troops comes from.”

  “Or someone on the fort has his booze delivered. Say by some enterprising fella with a fast car.” Amos.

  When I reached the commissary, I paused until two soldiers walked by me on the boardwalk. They carried jars concealed in a brown bag, and I fell in behind them. They stepped to the far door and rapped. A man my age cracked the door just far enough to take their jars, then shut it. When he opened it to pass the soldiers their booze, I caught a glimpse of Dutch. He was bent over large wooden barrels filling jars.

  “Got yours?”

  The man’s voice surprised me, and I faced him. A corporal peeked his head out the door. “Got what?”

  “Your jar. Do you not have one?”

  “I broke it,” I lied.

  “Then I’ll have to charge you an extra quarter for one.”

  A quarter was pretty steep, but I had little choice. I paid him for the jar, plus another fifty cents for the moonshine, and he slammed the door. Within moments, he opened it and thrust my jar out the opening. I turned away as a private approached me carrying his own empty jar.

  I walked to the end of the boardwalk between the commissary building and the mess hall and sat on the walkway where I could watch the door. I set the jar of shine beside me and eyed it like it was a dangerous snake. It had been a long time since I’d held a bottle of corn whisky, and I moved it behind me like it was Satan.

  I leaned back against the building to keep an eye on the commissary, when singing, loud and off-key, neared. Two soldiers, a Mutt and Jeff, tall and short, jars in hand, staggered toward me. When they spotted me leaning against the side of the mess hall, Shorty dropped down on the boardwalk beside me, and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. The stench of putrid whisky permeated his pores as he sweated in the intense, humid air. The corporal stood in front of me and tipped his jar.

  “I know you,” the corporal said. He had to strain to keep his arm on my shoulders.

  “Can’t say as I know you.”

  Shorty squinted and drew his head back. “Well, you look like someone who’s been around.” He looked at my shirtsleeves. “You’re kinda old to be a private.”

  I forced a laugh. “I don’t work and play well with officers.”

  He tilted his head back and let out a war cry that reverberated off the buildings. “Ned, this is
our kind of soldier.”

  Ned looked down and tried to focus on me through his bleary eyes. He lost his balance as he bent down and caught himself on the corner of the building. He tapped his jar against his friend’s.

  The short soldier beside me started to tip up when he noticed I wasn’t. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “We’re drinking a toast to the officers. Where’s your drink, man?”

  “Here.” I motioned to my sack.

  “Well, then, screw the army.” His jar swayed as he held it in front of me to complete the toast. I grabbed my sack and tapped his. He tipped back and laughed. He took a long pull and wiped his mouth with his finger. “You’re not drinking?”

  “I’m saving it,” I said.

  “Oh, now you’re too good to drink with us?”

  Ned stepped closer, and a scowl had overcome his face. “That what you’re saying, that you’re too good to toast with the likes of us?”

  The man behind the door to the commissary poked his head out. “Keep the damned noise down unless you want the guards coming around.”

  “This son of a bitch won’t have a drink with us.”

  “Well, somebody damned well better have a drink,” the square-headed man said from the safety of the commissary, “or I’ll call the guards myself.”

  Ned stepped closer to me, and I stood. He was stocky and not as tall as me, but I could see when I looked him in the eye that he wasn’t nearly as drunk as I’d thought. And neither was the corporal sitting beside me. He hopped up and set his jar on the boardwalk. He produced an Arkansas toothpick from somewhere down his boot and started cleaning his fingernails. “We heard there’s a US marshal working El Reno looking for moonshiners.”

  “Good for him,” I said.

  Ned’s hand snaked to his back pocket, and for the first time I saw the imprint of a flat sap. “Soldiers think enough of that marshal rumor that we started taking turns watching out for him. Just in case he sneaks on to the fort.”

  “So you think I’m some marshal?”

  “Or a revenuer,” Ned said.

  I laughed and uncapped the lid on my jar. The wonderful odor of corn whisky filled my nostrils, memories of going to bed with such a drink and awaking to one also. Just to keep them off me, I touched the jar to my lips and ran my tongue over the rim. Hot hooch. I closed my eyes and took a sip. Just a tiny sip. This was no bathtub gin. Whoever supplied the fort with this stuff knew how to cook. I took another sip, a longer pull this time. “Would a revenuer drink in front of witnesses?”

  Shorty bent and picked up his glass. He slapped me on the back and raised his jar high. “To the army, then.” I tapped his and Ned’s and started to put the lid back on when I paused—just one short sip. Just a nip to convince them I was no revenuer. I took a short pull, followed by a longer one. The whisky slid down my throat, the wonderful, familiar burning reaching my insides like an old friend I had not visited with in so long, a friend I could invite to stay the night. And many nights after.

  Ned laughed. Shorty tipped his jar up. I did the same, a longer drink this time, both hands on the jar to steady myself. I began to feel my head detach from my body like it usually did on my way to becoming drunk. I pulled the jar away and wiped my mouth. “Damn, this is no rotgut. Dutch cook this himself?”

  Ned shook his head and capped his jar. “He used to.” He motioned to the commissary. “Had some fancy still in the basement there. Now he buys it from some guy in Oklahoma City that’s . . . connected.”

  Vincent. Dutch was buying hooch from Vincent. And with Vincent, there would have to be runners he could trust. Drivers able and willing to outrun the law to deliver their goods. Even if that meant killing someone like Deputy Wells. And Amos.

  “Down the hatch,” Shorty said, and we tossed the last for the sake of the army, the country, and for piss-ant officers. And—though they didn’t know it—for the US Marshal Service as well.

  CHAPTER 19

  * * *

  “Is this your lady you were crooning about?”

  I awoke suspended between Ned and Shorty, my feet dragging in the dirt. Maris leaned against the guard shack talking with the guard, and she straightened when they dragged me out the gate. “What the hell have you done, Nels?”

  “I backslid,” I said. I offered a lame salute, then began to laugh. For what reason, I don’t know. It just seemed funny. “I think I need you to get me another jar.”

  Ned motioned to Maris. “You finished the last of my jar, but I’ll get you another refill and trade it for your lady.”

  “In your dreams, limp dick,” Maris spat out.

  I laughed again. If anyone could spot a limp dick, it’d be Maris.

  “Pour him into my car for me, will ya’ Billy?” she said to the gate guard.

  “He’s your man?” Billy said with a hurt look on his hound-dog face when he realized he wouldn’t get lucky tonight. “Haul him yourself.”

  “He’s not my man. Now just grab him.”

  Billy and Maris each took a side and shoved me headfirst into Maris’s Studebaker. She slammed the door sufficiently hard that the sound bounced around my head, which had begun to throb in time with the car’s motor. Maris drove the four miles back to town in silence, until we crossed the El Reno city limits. That’s when she made up for it. “Don’t you just beat all! Not only did you fail to tail Dutch when he left, but you fell off the wagon.”

  “Guess I got a little carried away with the boys.” I laughed and immediately held my aching head from rolling from my shoulders. “But at least I saw that Dutch was up to his leggings in illegal booze. The good stuff, like Vincent runs. And Ned there described Dutch’s partner, the one supplies him with hooch—sounds just like Amos. It’s just a matter of watching the fort—”

  “You’re not going to watch anything right now,” she said, gnashing the Studebaker into third gear.

  “Then where we going?”

  “You need help I can’t give you. You need Uncle Byron.” She slapped me across the chest. “Don’t you just beat all.”

  Byron poured another cup of high-octane coffee, the kind that looks like it’s been sitting on a hot plate for two days until it developed the texture of Oklahoma sweet crude. Which was preferable to the cure he brought out to me earlier. “What is it?”

  “Soup,” Byron answered.

  “I can see that, at least with my one good eye.” I laughed. “What kind of soup?”

  “Mexicans call it menudo. They claim it is guaranteed to cure your hangover.”

  I tried the soup, and it was spicy, with a distinct chili pepper base. “What’s in it?” I asked after my second bowl.

  “Some chopped onions. Cilantro.”

  “Tell him the rest, Uncle Byron.”

  I stopped mid-spoon-to-my-mouth. “What’s the rest?”

  “Uncle Byron.”

  “All right,” Byron threw up his hands. “It is made with tripe.”

  “Tripe?”

  “Beef stomach.”

  That had been the first of many trips to the privy to get rid of the soup. Along with the corn liquor wallowing around in my gut.

  Maris had started into her new pack of Chesterfields when she backhanded me on the shoulder. “How the hell am I to find Amos while I lug a drunk around town?”

  “Leave him be,” Bryon said. He figured my gut was sufficiently empty that he gave me a tall glass of buttermilk.

  “Even if you sober him up, he can’t guarantee this won’t happen again,” Maris said.

  Byron dumped the coffee grounds into a paper bag and began leveling fresh Chase and Sanborn into the hopper of the pot. “None of us can guarantee we won’t slip. One drink, and any of us could be back on the sauce again.”

  “But you never slipped . . .”

  “Wanna bet?” Byron said.

  “It won’t happen again,” I said without much conviction. “I had no choice tonight. Those two soldiers would have ruined it for us. If I hadn
’t taken a drink to prove I was no revenuer, they would have yelled so loud, Dutch and his cronies would have been alerted.”

  “And to think I had to entertain that gate guard with nothing to show except smeared lipstick.”

  “We got more than that.” I held my cup out for fresh coffee. “I told you I saw Dutch sell the booze. Open, like he didn’t care who saw him. I thought you said Stauffer’s hell on wheels busting bootleggers?”

  Maris lit a fresh cigarette on the smoldering embers of her current one. “That’s what bothered me tonight—besides you falling off the wagon—that Dutch runs his operation right under Stauffer’s nose.”

  “Maybe the sheriff is just biding his time,” Byron said. “Waiting to see who Dutch’s cohorts are.” He sat on a stool next to me and, lifting the cover, grabbed a cookie from a glass cake plate. “Then again, maybe Stauffer is as crooked as a corkscrew, and Dutch is paying him to look the other way.”

  “That’s just great,” I said. “I got no business getting mixed up in local corruption. I just want to find Amos and take him back to Wyoming before Stauffer arrests him on that warrant.”

  Maris blew smoke in my direction, which did nothing for the whisky still souring my belly, as well as for my aching head. “Looks like you got no choice. Seems like our local corruption and finding Amos will go hand in hand.”

  I stood on shaky legs. My head still felt twice as big as it should have, and my gut was dead sore from the dry heaves. But at least I could function. Sort of.

  I thanked Byron and assured him this wouldn’t happen again. I draped an arm around Maris. “Please take me back to my room before I turn into a pumpkin.”

  CHAPTER 20

  * * *

  Maris insisted on helping me into the elevator rather than take the stairs to my floor. I protested. I lost the argument, and we rode the lift up while I leaned against the wall. “Key,” she ordered when we got outside my room.

  While I fished into my pocket for my room key, Maris leaned against my door.

  It swung open and hit the wall behind it with a sharp crunch.